Religious Right Propaganda in Civics Textbook Uncorrected in 11th Edition

In 2006, New Jersey public high-school junior Matthew LaClair made headlines after secretly tape recording the unconstitutional religious messages his history teacher aimed at the students. Now a senior, LaClair finds himself in the news again, this time for exposing misinformation in a nationally distributed textbook used in his advanced-placement government class. In the book, American Government: Institutions and Policies, tenth edition (Boston: Houghton Mifflin Company, 2006), LaClair found what he believed to be several inaccurate and misleading statements, including editorializing, inaccuracies about constitutional law, and attempts to sway students to side with the minority of scientists who dismiss global warming.

...LaClair said he first became suspicious when he read a passage that he knew was factually inaccurate, stating that prayer in any form was banned on school grounds. In addition to the book falsely stating that assertion twice, a photograph of praying students was captioned, "The Supreme Court will not let this happen inside a public school." In fact, students may pray alone or in groups, at any time they like, as long as they don't disrupt the learning environment. What's unconstitutional is compulsory or teacher-led prayer-the active promotion of a specific faith by tax-supported figures of authority. The book disingenuously portrayed the faith community as public-school martyrs, a known tactic used by the Religious Right to perpetuate unwarranted feelings of victimhood and influence policy makers. Ronald A. Lindsay, CFI's general legal counsel and co-author of the report, characterized the errors as "significant and inexcusable," and noted that falsely claiming the Supreme Court banned prayer in schools "betrays either a serious misunderstanding of the law or a willingness to have the textbook serve as a propaganda vehicle for the Religious Right."

...All would have been well, [author James Wilson] posits, if CFI only "had looked at the most recent version of the book (which was in print long before they complained)."

...An electronic copy was purchased and downloaded April 8, and a side-by-side analysis of sixteen examples from both editions shows the offending text wholly unaltered in eleven instances (which includes repeating a falsely depicted 6-3 court ruling as a contentious 5-4 decision), and altered to correct only a spelling error in a twelfth (it read, "global warning").

Related Article: Religious Right Propaganda in Civics Textbook (April 8, 2008)