I often wish I could clone myself so I could cover more school districts more deeply. Since we don’t have the budget for me to do that, I rely on other newspapers like the Del Mar Times to find interesting snippets like this one from across the county:
Three North County residents contend a textbook used to teach seventh-graders about the Islamic religion in the San Dieguito Union High School District “romanticizes” the history of the religion, and they want the district to use supplemental information to provide what they say would be a more balanced view.
The article quotes another San Dieguito parent, Tehseen Lazzouni, the director of the Islamic Speakers Bureau of San Diego, who calls the references in the three residents’ report “inflammatory.”
I haven’t seen this textbook for myself, so I can’t say whether these three people are right to be worried or not. But what struck me about this article is the fact that people are even eyeing textbooks at all, something that I haven’t heard much about while covering schools in San Diego.
In California, there have been scattered spats over textbooks on specific issues, such as how Hinduism is depicted and whether conservative changes to Texas curriculum would impact California books.
History textbooks have also come under scrutiny in Virginia, but from another corner: Historians found textbooks there were riddled with errors, the Washington Post reported.
Teachers, students, parents and others: Have you found errors in your textbooks? Are you frustrated with the way certain events or issues are portrayed? And do you find textbooks useful at all, or are those big books a big waste? Please weigh in here on the blog or shoot me an email with your stories.
Please contact Emily Alpert directly at emily.alpert@voiceofsandiego.org or 619.550.5665 and follow her on Twitter: twitter.com/emilyschoolsyou.