School Board Votes Yes on Controversial Texts

San Diego city schools will use controversial new social studies textbooks approved by state educational officials for elementary- and middle-school grades, a divided board of trustees voted Tuesday.

A four-member majority, opposed by President Shirley Weber, decided to move ahead with the new books despite a chorus of opposition from black, Latino and Asian-American groups who argued that the texts--no matter how improved over existing versions--still stereotype or merely pay lip service to ethnic and non-Western roles in history.

But the board majority also insisted that its vote does not mean an automatic approval for districtwide adoption of the kindergarten-through-eighth-grade texts next year. That approval will depend on the willingness of the textbook publisher to work with the district to identify other readings and develop new materials that offer historical perspectives beyond those contained in the texts, trustees promised.

The monthlong debate before trustees during April mirrored that across the United States and particularly in California, where the state Department of Education last year adopted the Houghton Mifflin publishing company’s series as the only one meeting state requirements for promoting cultural diversity and the contributions of men and women of various ethnic groups.

School districts within the state have the option of adopting or rejecting the books, but the state offers a large carrot for adoption--$3.6 million in the case of San Diego--because it will pay purchase costs should a district go ahead with state-approved texts. Among the state’s larger urban districts, Los Angeles and Long Beach city schools have approved the texts, while San Francisco and Sacramento are undecided.

In the largest sense, the debate is over whether the increasing number of nonwhites in California public schools can feel a part of the American experience if texts concentrate on European culture and minimize the contributions of other races.

That argument is countered by those who emphasize the improvements in new texts as well as the need to emphasize the European origins of American culture.

District Supt. Tom Payzant reflected the views of a board majority Tuesday when he argued strongly for the pilot adoption to proceed, saying that he was “unwilling to accept the argument that we cannot, through learning, move beyond the limits of our experience. Nor do I accept that our race, culture, religion or gender uniformly define our ability and willingness to do so.

“African-Americans, Anglos, Asians and Hispanics do not speak with one voice on these issues, and we should not condemn an Anglo critic who says these books are too Eurocentric nor the African-American advocate who says they are not.”

Added Payzant: “If we strive to provide a ‘politically correct’ history for each racial, ethnic, gender and religious group, we will be neutralized and unable to move young people and adults to accept and understand differences as we work together to help this multicultural community shape and cherish its cultural pluralism.”

But board president Weber, a professor of Africana Studies at San Diego State University, offered a counter-perspective in explaining her decision to vote no.

In lecturing to her colleagues and to Payzant, Weber said it is very difficult to communicate the feelings that nonwhites have in expressing their frustration over the presentation of history in American schools.

She said that nonwhites are “always on the outside looking in” and that Anglos cannot understand the point of view of people of color “unless you’ve been there . . . (felt) the rejection in the classroom . . . it’s impossible to communicate that to this board.”

As an example, Weber pointed to what she said was a reluctance by the publisher to acknowledge recent scholarship that suggests that ancient Egyptian civilization may have been rooted more in Africa than in the Middle East.

Politics and racism explain “the taking of Egypt out of Africa” in the texts, Weber charged. She added that blacks and others want nonwhite children to “feel a sense of equality, of the right to be in the classroom . . . , not just equal time (in texts) but equal perspective and point of view” to be represented so that students will not learn “a superior versus inferior point of view of the world.”