The California Textbook Fight

The public educational system has long been an object of political attack by California’s well-financed right wing. The ultraconservative political catechism holds that the schools are controlled by liberals who are coddling the New Left, suppressing old-fashioned patriotism, and indoctrinating helpless children for subversion. The dismissal of University of California president Clark Kerr, bitterly criticized by the right for his “soft” approach to campus unrest, was the stormiest recent episode in the history of relations between California’s right-wingers and beleaguered educators.

The focus of much recent pressure has been a new eighth-grade American history textbook, Land of the Free, which has been adopted for statewide use by California’s board of education. Stylishly bound, illustrated in color, and replete with the fillips that are now fashionable in textbook production, this hefty volume has been the subject of newspaper editorials and public meetings, consideration by local school boards, and a massive letter-writing campaign.

Land of the Free

The authors of Land of the Free are John Hope Franklin, professor of history at the University of Chicago and a leading social historian; John W. Caughey, University of California (Los Angeles) historian and a leading figure in California’s civil liberties organizations; and Ernest May, a diplomatic historian at Harvard. To understand how these men and their book were swept into the storm center of California politics, one must take account of some peculiarities of textbook-adoption procedures and their recent history in the state.

In the first place, libertarian and civil rights groups have been no less active than the right in drawing public attention to textbooks and their contents. In 1949 the AntiDefamation League of B’nai B’rith sponsored a now famous survey of current textbooks as they treated the role of minority groups in American life. Similarly, CORE and other civil rights groups have voiced sustained criticism of textbooks that give little or merely patronizing attention to minorities. And in California, it was under pressure from CORE that the state legislature acted in 1964, demanding by law that American history and civics texts adopted by the public schools give appropriate attention to minority problems and rights.

Second, the state board of education has thrown its weight behind the effort to get new textbooks written or old ones revised. Shortly after the legislature acted in 1964, the board — which maintains a curriculum commission to review textbooks submitted to it by publishers, and which has power to require statewide adoption of specific books in the public schools — issued a set of guidelines for textbook evaluation. The guidelines called for books that are “factually accurate” and that “develop a positive appreciation of and loyalty to our basic American ideals and institutions, including equal rights and opportunities for all people.” The board declared further that texts should be “written objectively and in good taste by authors who are competent and loyal to American ideals and principles” — language that leaves considerable room for interpretation.

The third element in the California situation consisted of an unusual series of moves by the state board of education, moves made specifically in response to Land of the Free. The authors clearly wrote Land of the Free with an eye on the California market: the volume gives far more emphasis to social history (including themes of immigration, cultural pluralism, and treatment of minorities) than do conventional texts; but more important, when the publishers submitted Land of the Free to the state board for review and possible adoption, they submitted a preliminary version, holding the door open for revisions if the board required changes as the condition of adoption. (The authors vested distribution rights in California in Franklin Publications; the firm of Benziger Brothers is handling distribution in other states.) The board at first followed customary procedures, assigning the book to the curriculum commission for review, revision suggestions, and ultimately a recommendation to the board itself for adoption or rejection.

In May, 1966, the curriculum commission reported in favor of adoption — but contingent upon extensive revisions, or what one member called a major editing job to correct inaccuracies and modify some basic interpretations and emphases. At this juncture, the board decided to appoint a special panel of experts to review the text once again and set out specific requirements for revision — and in the process, the board made a sensational public issue of Land of the Free. Appointed to the panel were three residents of the state, all professional historians: Allan Nevins, professor emeritus at Columbia University and now a research associate in the Huntington Library at San Merino; Glenn Dumke, chancellor of the California state college system; and Charles G. Sellers, professor of history at Berkeley.

“The great majority”

By this time, the book was well on its way toward becoming a cause célèbre. On May 13, just as the board was appointing the special panel, a conservative professor of educational administration at the University of Southern California was quoted in the state’s newspapers as condemning Land of the Free as “slanted in the direction of civil rights . . . the United Nations . . . [and] militant groups,” and as unfriendly to “the great majority.” Key committee members of the California state legislature attacked the book in press interviews, and the state’s superintendent of public instruction, Max Rafferty (a potential candidate to unseat liberal Republican Senator Thomas Kuchel in 1968), declared that Land of the Free would require “a major salvage effort” before it could be made fit for consumption in California’s classrooms. The book was put on display in public libraries for citizens’ inspection, and both right-wing and liberal groups, apparently alerted by friends of each side on the state board of education, urged Californians to peruse the book and make their views known to the board.

On July 25, mail on Land of the Free had become so voluminous that Mr. Rafferty’s office issued a 218page mimeographed publication reproducing letters received on the question of its adoption. Adverse criticism came mainly from individuals, many of whose letters were remarkably alike in language as well as in their objections to the book’s supposed pro-UN bias, to derogatory statements allegedly made about famous Americans (Calvin Coolidge, Herbert Hoover, Dwight Eisenhower), to neglect of the nation’s military heritage, and to favorable treatment of W. E. B. DuBois and other radicals.

Mr. Rafferty himself complained of the book’s contention that in the Sacco-Vanzetti case the judge and jury “were prejudiced against them on account of their being foreignborn radicals”; he denied that the United States was an imperialist power in 1900, “as chanted by Communist propaganda”; and he objected to inclusion of casualty figures from the A-bomb attacks on Hiroshima and Nagasaki but omission of U.S. casualties suffered at Pearl Harbor. Rafferty found that “the most objectionable material in the book,” however, was on a subject that strikes close to conservative sentiment in California — the loyalty and security programs of the McCarthy era. Of the notions that congressional committees “went hunting for Communists” (Rafferty: “It’s about time”), or that uncertainty remains as to whether McCarthy drove a single bona fide Communist out of government service, Rafferty asserted: “This is poor editorial opinion with little resemblance to historical fact.”

Other comments, generally favorable, came from organized professional groups and liberal organizations. The president of the California Council for the Social Studies, representing 2000 social studies teachers, said that Land of the Free would be “one of the first major adoptions in the history of California to bring to the classrooms of this State a full measure of truth about our promises and problems as Americans.” The director of a Los Angeles neighborhood association declared that adoption of the book would be “of significant help” in fostering interracial community relations in her area. And the director of the Anti-Defamation League’s Los Angeles office hailed the volume as one of the few textbooks available that would satisfy his own organization’s and the American Council on Education’s guidelines for fair treatment of minorities in history and civics textbooks.

Pressure from the right

But meanwhile the Land of the Free controversy was broadening into a witch-hunt. During the spring there appeared a 24-page pamphlet on Land of the Free, bearing the imprint of the “Land of the Free Committee,” based in Pasadena. Its message was clear enough: the book “destroys pride in America’s past, develops a guilt complex, mocks American justice, indoctrinates toward communism, is hostile to religious concepts, overemphasizes Negro participation in American history, projects negative thought models, criticizes business and free enterprise, plays politics, foments class hatred, slants and distorts facts, [and] promotes propaganda and poppycock.” Shortly afterward a filmstrip began to circulate for use in community and local schoolboard meetings; an accompanying recording carried the same message (in large part, in the same language) as the Pasadena committee’s pamphlet.

Newspapers around the state began to follow the controversy closely, as local school officials and private citizens provided them with apparently endless copy on the subject. Much of the controversy came to a focus on the book’s co-author John Caughey. He had been a leading opponent of loyalty oaths for university professors in the University of California system, and he was the signer of clemency petitions for alleged Communists indicted by congressional committees. The Pasadena pamphlet and the filmstrip recording juxtaposed comments on Caughey with quotations from Lenin on textbooks as a propaganda tool, and left it to the concerned citizen to draw his own conclusions.

Another Southern California sheet. “FACTS in Education” (FFundamental Issues; A-Americanism; C-Constitutional Government; T-Truth; S-Spiritual Values), similarly traded in calculated ad hominem references and outright smears. It carefully identified co-author John Hope Franklin as “Negro professor, University of Chicago,” spoke of Caughey’s efforts to obtain clemency for “two identified Communists,” and objected to favorable mention in the book for Martin Luther King, whose “record of 60 Communist front organizations, attested to by Karl Prussion — former counterspy for the FBI — was printed in the Congressional Record.”

In the heavy-handed style of hate literature, it also attacked the curriculum commission’s special panel. Professor Nevins was the sheet’s chief concern because he once attacked “extreme nationalism” in the classroom. And in an elaborate misreading of an article once published by Nevins, “FACTS in Education” claimed that “consistent with the philosophy of UNESCO,” Nevins “seems to advocate . . . the intermarriage of Negroes and whites.”

It was thus in a politically tense atmosphere that the Sellers-NevinsDumke panel issued its report on the preliminary version of Land of the Free. The panel praised the “generally high quality” of the book, warning that no text could please every political faction or take the form of a compendium of undigested fact. But the report also sided with some of the critics who called for changes in specific passages and a more balanced presentation of the most controversial issues.

As a result, the authors of Land of the Free made a few major changes and a host of minor alterations in their book. The text was resubmitted for review by the curriculum commission, declared acceptable by the Sellers-Nevins-Dumke panel, and finally adopted officially for mandatory use in California’s eighth-grade classrooms this fall.

And so, perhaps, the Land of the Free controversy is over. Mr. Rafferty has expressed his satisfaction with the changes made by the authors; and he has informed recalcitrant local school boards opposed to the adoption that failure to use the book would be cause for prosecution under the state’s educational code. And yet perhaps the fight is not over. For on the one hand, several state assemblymen have declared themselves in favor of a proviso in appropriations bills that would bar use of state funds to purchase the book. No less important, there sits in Sacramento today a governor whose most spectacular policy moves in his first months include cutting down Clark Kerr, assaulting the state university and trimming its budget, virtually closing down the state’s consumercounsel office, curtailing welfare activities, and (by dint of itemveto powers) forcing cuts on the state’s mental health program. If Land of the Free captures Ronald Reagan’s interest (assuming it has not already), all bets may be off. And on the other hand, the ultraconservative campaign against the book goes on: the Pasadena filmstrip continues to be shown and debated, without reference to changes made in the book since it was first submitted. And some local school boards apparently are keeping up their pressure for reconsideration of the decision to adopt.

A paper victory?

Whether or not the Land of the Free episode is over, its history to date suggests a number of important lessons. In the first place, the right has demonstrated once again that it commands both ample funds and sufficient public relations expertise to conduct a highly effective campaign against textbooks that offend conservative concepts of patriotism. Nor has the right been lax in perceiving new opportunities to exploit mass media: many of California’s local radio stations devote hour after hour of air time to programs that consist of telephone conversations with any and all listeners who wish to call and talk, and there has been no lack of talk — mostly uninformed — about Land of the Free. In short, if CORE, B’nai B’rith, and civil rights groups have pioneered the recent public reappraisal of textbook content, the ultraconservatives have proved themselves no less effective in this arena.

No one would question that it is a legitimate right of Americans to express their views on school curriculum and textbooks. But the resolution of controversies in this field may too easily be dictated by the balance of political power in a state or community, instead of by reasoned and expertly informed discussion. Moreover, a war atmosphere does not contribute to reasoned dialogue.

The Land of the Free episode suggests that the professional associations of academicians (composed mainly of college professors who seldom experience personally the impact of textbook-adoption pressures) should take the initiative to assure expert and informed discussion of textbooks in the public schools. The American Historical Association and most other associations of the social sciences already have textbook committees or other special groups studying the teaching of their subjects in the elementary and high schools. But it now seems imperative that they take a more aggressive role in evaluating procedures of state and local school boards in the selection of texts for school use.

Finally, what is the proper role of the publishers of textbooks and the authors who write them? In California, which now makes up about a tenth of the American schoolbook market, the state board of education not only purchases textbooks outright from publishers in finished (manufactured) form, but for reasons of economy, it will often purchase rights to the printer’s plates and then manufacture its own finished books. In the process, minor changes often are necessary to conform to the state printer’s manual. In the case of Land of the Free, the procedures established to permit routine changes of this kind became the vehicle for a full-scale review of the book’s content.

My own judgment as a historian is that the changes incorporated by the authors of Land of the Free in response to the Sellers-Nevins-Dumke panel’s critique were constructive and compromised the book in no major respects. (Indeed, the authors forcefully and eloquently resisted pressure for certain deletions that clearly would have meant outright censorship.) However, a panel of professional historians reviewing the text prior to its initial submission to the California authorities no doubt would have suggested changes not much different from those recommended by the Sellers-NevinsDumke panel.

Review or censorship?

In short, publishers and textbook authors might help head off threats to academic freedom by submitting to school adoption boards only textbooks in final form. The job of scholarly review and revisions should be done by panels of privately engaged experts prior to publication and submission to adoption authorities. This is less like censorship than the present phenomenon of state officials pressuring textbook authors with the rule that adoption of a text is contingent on specific additions, deletions, and alterations. “This antiAmerican slant must be removed.” “Omit this and all other such false jabs that tear our country down.” “All of this material must be deleted.” Such were Mr. Rafferty’s comments, for instance, on passages that he found offensive in Land of the Free. Even more ominous, as an indicator of how adoption decisions are being made, is this suggestion from one of the curriculum commission members: “Outcome of the Scopes trial not mentioned, but perhaps it is better not to mention it than to stir up another hornet’s nest.” (Translation: obviously, historical objectivity requires full discussion of the Scopes trial issues and decision, but full discussion would, mobilize the Anti-Evolution Lobby.)

Market pressure

There is a certain irony, to be sure, in resting one’s hopes on prepublication reviewing and revision. Every academic historian knows of instances in which the publishers themselves exerted pressure on authors to delete material on the SaccoVanzetti case because of the “Massachusetts market,” or to alter passages on Negro history because of the “Southern market.” Authors must be willing to stand on what they have written and what they believe, not only against overt pressures from school authorities, but from time to time against timid and sales-oriented publishers as well.

Publishers, in their turn, must be willing to unite against marketoriented internal review procedures designed to maximize sales at all costs; and to take a stand against special-interest pressure from outside for changes in textbook content. Whether American publishing firms

— or the industrial giants that are now absorbing the nation’s leading publishers through merger and purchase — are willing to make that kind of stand is a speculative question indeed.

— Harry N. Scheiber

REPORT CONTRIBUTORS

Elizabeth Brenner Drew writes regularly for the ATLANTICfrom Washington. Maynard Parker is a Hong-Kong-based correspondent for NEWSWEEK.Georgie Ann Geyer, a foreign correspondent for the Chicago DAILY NEWS,is at work on a book about Latin America. Harry N. Scheiber, an associate professor of history at Dartmouth, spent last year at Stanford.