By ACACIA CORONADO
The Associated Press
AUSTIN, Texas Texas’ education board approved new science textbooks Friday but called on some publishers to remove material that some Republicans criticized as incorrect or negative portrayals of fossil fuels in the U.S.’s biggest oil and gas state.
The vote laid bare divisions on the Texas State Board of Education over how students learn about climate change. In recent years, the panel has faced other heated curriculum battles surrounding how evolution and U.S. history are taught to more than 5 million students.
“The publishers won’t water it down too much because the publishers do want to have scientifically accurate textbooks but they also want to sell them in Texas,” said Glenn Branch, deputy director of the National Center on Science Education.
Science standards adopted by the board’s conservative majority in 2021 do not mention creationism as an alternative to evolution. Those standards also describe human factors as contributors to climate change.
But some Republicans on the 15-member board this week waved off current textbook options as too negative toward fossil fuels and failing to include alternatives to evolution. One of Texas’ regulators of the oil and gas industry, Republican Wayne Christian, had urged the board to “choose books that promote the importance of fossil fuels for energy promotion.”
Texas has more than 1,000 school districts and none are obligated to use textbooks approved by the board. Still, the endorsements carry weight.
Friday’s vote was to decide which textbooks met standards set in 2021. Branch said multiple books comply with the regulations set then by the board and follow the consensus of the scientific community.
Scientists overwhelmingly agree that heat-trapping gases released from the combustion of fossil fuels are pushing up global temperatures, upending weather patterns and endangering animal species.
Several books were approved Friday on the condition that changes be made by the publishers.
Aaron Kinsey, a Republican board member and executive of an oil field services company in West Texas, voted to reject a personal finance textbook because of how it depicted the oil market. He also called a line describing energy conservation as necessary to achieve energy independence a “half truth.”
Another textbook focused on biology was approved on the condition that images portraying humans as sharing an ancestry with monkeys be deleted.
In a letter Thursday, the National Science Teaching Association, which is made up of 35,000 science educators across the U.S., urged the board not to “allow misguided objections to evolution and climate change impede the adoption of science textbooks in Texas.”
