Texas: Republican-controlled school board votes against climate textbooks | Texas

Texas’s Republican-controlled Board of Education voted Friday not to include several climate textbooks in the state science curriculum.

The 15-member board rejected seven out of 12 eighth-graders. The approved textbooks are published by Savvas Learning Company, McGraw Hill, Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, Accelerate Learning and Summit K-12.

The rejected textbooks included climate crisis policy solutions, and conservative councilors criticized them for being too negative about fossil fuels – a major industry in the state. Texas leads the nation in the production of crude oil and natural gas.

Although Texas adopted standards in 2021 requiring eighth graders to be taught the basics about climate change, some argue the measure doesn’t go far enough.

Aaron Kinsey, a Republican councilman and CEO of an oilfield services company in west Texas, criticized photos in some textbooks as unnecessary to the oil and gas industry during a discussion of the material this week.

“The selection of certain images can make things look worse than they are, and I believe there was bias,” Kinsey said, according to Hearst Newspapers.

“Do you want to see children smiling in oil fields?” said Democratic Councilwoman Aicha Davis. “I don’t know what you want.”

Texas’ more than 1,000 school districts are not required to use board-approved textbooks. But the board’s decision has influence.

Some in powerful positions tried to sway the council to reject the textbooks. On Nov. 1, Texas Railroad Commissioner Wayne Christian — who oversees the state’s oil and gas industry — sent a letter to board of education chairman Kevin Ellis expressing “concern about potential textbooks that promote a radical environmentalist agenda can promote”.

The inclusion of lessons on evolution – the theory addressing the origins of human existence that is supported by the scientific community and rejected by religious groups – has also been contested.

The decision comes despite pleas from the National Science Teaching Association not to “allow misguided objections to evolution and climate change” to influence the adoption of new textbooks.

The deputy director of the National Center for Science Education, Glenn Branch, said: “Board members are clearly motivated to remove some of these textbooks from the approved list because of their personal and ideological beliefs regarding evolution and climate change.”

Texas is one of six states that has not adopted the Next Generation Science Standards in its K-12 science curriculum. The standards emphasize that climate change is a real threat caused by humans and can be mitigated by a reduction in greenhouse gases.

Texas has seen some of the extreme consequences of the worsening climate crisis in recent years. According to Texas State Climatologist John Nielsen-Gammon, the summer of 2023 was the second hottest on record, after 2011.

In 2021, Texas experienced an unprecedented winter storm that blanketed much of the state in snow, left millions without power after the electrical grid failed, and resulted in deaths. Houston also bore the brunt of 2017’s Hurricane Harvey, a devastating Category 4 hurricane that destroyed homes and buildings while killing more than 100 people in Texas.

The state ranks 41st out of 50 in the US for education.

The Associated Press reported