Book Briefs: December 12, 1986

Censorship: Evidence of Bias in Our Children’s Textbooks, by Paul C. Vitz (Servant, 1986, 154 pp.; $6.95, paper). Reviewed by Charles Glenn, director of equal educational opportunity, Massachusetts Department of Education.

Educators have had great difficulty hearing the concern of parents about their children’s schools’ treatment of religion and values (see my article “Why Public Schools Don’t Listen” [CT, Sept. 20, 1985]). After all, they go to great lengths to assure fairness and to avoid controversial material, such as religion, not realizing that to avoid something gives some students the message that it is unimportant.

Public educators have needed an objective (though not dispassionate) study of the missing elements in our presentation of American life and history, as the basis for developing a curriculum that does justice to the convictions of millions of parents. In Censorship, New York University psychology professor Paul Vitz has given us such a study, employing all of the methodologies and cross checks of social science research. His study is one that does not depend upon assumptions and ways of thinking unfamiliar to most public educators, and thus it can, without awkwardness, serve as the basis for public policy discussions.

Textbook case: When Vicki Frost sued the Hawkins County (Tenn.) school board demanding religiously acceptable readers, author/educator Vitz testified as an expert witness to reinforce parents’ claims.

An Excerpt

Just the Facts

“In social studies texts for grades 1 to 4] twenty-five of the forty books have no reference in either word or image to American religious activity in any form: of the fifteen books that have a primary religious reference, seven refer only to religious activity in the historical past, either Puritan or Spanish mission life.… There is not one text reference to characteristic American Protestant religious life in these books.… Today’s powerful Protestant religious world of the Bible Belt, of the born-again Christians, of the fundamentalists and of the evangelicals … representing millions of Americans—is without one reference in word or image in this sample of forty books.

[In twenty-two basal readers for grades 3 and 6] there is not one story or article … in which the central motivation or major content derives from Christianity or Judaism.… There are scores of articles about animals, archaeology, fossils, or about magic—but none on religion, much less any about Christianity.… there is a minor spiritual or occult emphasis in a number of stories about American Indians.… even in the relatively religious biographical piece on Martin Luther King, Jr., there is no reference to how Christian ideas or the life of Jesus affected him.

[In ten high school U. S. history texts the] “Chronology of Events in American History” … contains over 450 events considered important.… The only three events referring to religion are (1) the landing of the Pilgrims in 1620; (2) the adoption of the Toleration Act in Maryland in 1649; and (3) the settling of the Mormons at Salt Lake in 1847. [In another text] of 642 listed events, only six refer to religion: (1) 1649—Religious Toleration Act in Maryland; (2) 1661—first Bible published in America; (3) 1692—Salem Witch Trials; (4) 1769—Spanish missions in California; (5) religious revivals of 1858; and (6) 1875—Hebrew Union College founded in Cincinnati.… The following supposedly important dates in American history are listed in this book: 1893, Yale introduces ice hockey … 1930, Irish Sweepstakes becomes popular; 1960, Pittsburgh Pirates win world series: 1962, Twist—a popular dance craze.”

Bias By Neglect

Vitz’s study, which has caused controversy in Washington because of its sponsorship by federal education research funds, is in a tradition of studies of bias in textbooks. Such studies in the past have considered whether the contributions of women or of black and Hispanic Americans are adequately represented in the school curriculum. More than a decade ago I issued instructions to every public school in Massachusetts to review the books and materials being used for such “bias by neglect,” and my colleagues in other states did the same. It did not occur to us, however, to ask whether religious faith was being downplayed even as other aspects of American life were beginning to receive appropriate attention. Now Vitz has asked—and answered—that important question.

The study reviews in detail the social studies texts produced by 10 major publishers for grades one through six, the basal readers produced by 11 publishers for grades three and six, and the United States history texts produced by 10 publishers for high schools. He shows that his selection is a fair representation of the textbooks in these areas currently in use in American public schools.

Briefly stated, Vitz finds an almost incredible degree of neglect of the role of religion in American history for the past century and more, and in contemporary life, with a particular aversion to Protestantism other than in its “quaint” Amish form: he comments that “those responsible for these books appear to have a deep-seated fear of any form of active contemporary Christianity, especially serious, committed Protestantism.”

He notes also a distorted presentation of family life that lays no stress upon the commitment of marriage as the norm or upon the vocation of full-time parenting. Patriotism, he finds, played a role in only 5 out of 670 stories and articles in basal readers, and in no case was the setting later than 1780. There is a similar neglect of business, of labor, and of altruism. Prominent contemporary political figures profiled in social studies texts are almost exclusively “liberal.” In brief, he finds a pattern of censorship by the publishers and purchasers of textbooks far more threatening than that represented by groups of parents.

Subtle And Accessible Studies

One way to see what a contribution Vitz has made is to compare his study with a briefer report by Donald Oppewal of Calvin College, included as an appendix. Oppewal, one of the authors of the excellent study Society, State and Schools, begins by identifying what he takes to be key elements of “traditional values” and of “secular humanism,” and shows how these are present or absent in a number of literature anthologies and other textbooks. The analysis is subtle and suggestive, but it depends upon prior agreement that, for example, “eulogizing the scientific method” represents “an epistemological commitment and not merely a commitment to scholarly accuracy.” Such an agreement simply does not exist as the basis for discussions with educators about how to make the public school curriculum more fair to the reality of religious convictions and motivations in American life.

I am afraid that in general, public educators and their religious critics have simply talked by one another because they were arguing from different pictures of reality. The great virtue of Paul Vitz’s study is that it is fully accessible to the most completely secularized mind, so long as that mind is capable of some objectivity about religion and traditional values. Either religiously significant events and motivations are mentioned in textbooks and readers, or they are not; and any conclusion is “subject to empirical verification” without judgments about secular humanism and other somewhat elusive ideologies.

As a Christian, I am grateful for the sophisticated analysis carried out by Don Oppewal and others; but as a public education official, I can make no direct use of it to work for curriculum changes. Paul Vitz’s new study, on the other hand, needing no “translation,” will be immensely useful to educators. After all, the data that he and his assistants have so laboriously collected and presented can be verified and reinterpreted as part of an ongoing discussion, and he provides a baseline against which we can measure progress in the future.

Involvement Or Abandonment?

But will public education respond and seek to make the curriculum more fair to the convictions of millions of American parents? Or will the impact of this study simply be to accelerate their repudiation of public education?

Here Vitz and I disagree. As a long-time state equity official, I have seen public schools go through tremendous changes over the past 15 years in how race and ethnicity and gender are presented and discussed. Most of these changes have been for the better. They occurred because teachers and administrators and school board members became convinced that they were right, and textbook publishers scrambled to catch up. All that stands in the way of a similar commitment of energy and creativity to dealing fairly with religion and traditional values in a million classrooms is the development of a conviction that it is right, that it is important for a sound education.

Paul Vitz reaches a more pessimistic conclusion. He is convinced that public schools and the textbook industry cannot be reformed, and that the only solution is tax support for religious schools. The arguments he deploys in his last chapter are familiar, and will be stated more fully in a forthcoming book to be published by Eerdmans (Democracy and the Renewal of Public Education, one of Richard John Neuhaus’s Encounter series). I wish that he had kept this discussion separate from his empirical study, since the credibility of the latter among public educators will be unwarrantedly diminished by the policy conclusion to which he comes—policy that is in no way based upon the study itself.

However, this is a good and useful book. The textbook study, in particular, deserves careful attention by educators and friends of public schooling. The final and somewhat unrelated chapter of policy prescriptions joins a growing chorus calling for the disestablishment of education: readers who reject the merit of these arguments have all the more reason to come to grips with the plain facts about textbooks that Vitz marshals so convincingly.

Wince With Wonder

The Orphean Passages: The Drama of Faith, by Walter Wangerin, Jr. (Harper & Row, 1986, 224 pp.; $16.95, cloth). Reviewed by John H. Timmerman, professor of English, Calvin College, author of A Layman Looks at the Names of Jesus (Tyndale, 1985).

Those who have read Walter Wangerin’s earlier books—The Book of the Dun Cow, The Book of Sorrows, Ragman and Other Cries of Faith, for example—will be struck by a dramatic difference in The Orphean Passages. Wangerin’s earlier books possessed a sizzling narrative pace, in which he punched out sentences like line drives across a major league infield. Words churn and blaze.

The Orphean Passages, a work of “story theology,” proceeds at a different pace. Four distinct narratives interweave: a recounting of the Greek myth of Orpheus and Eurydice, biblical accounts that parallel the mythic yearning, the narrative plot of Pastor Orpheus moving through passages of faith, and Wangerin’s own pastoral and theological reflections on the nature of faith. The cumulative effect of this tapestry carries a spiritual force that makes one wince with wonder.

Meditation On Grace

This is a book to read with care and meditation. Parts of it evoke The Dark Night of the Soul by Saint John of the Cross, one of the guiding spirits behind this work. Read quickly, the passages will strike the reader as repetitive and opaque. But the reader who gives in to the pace of the prose, savoring the rhythm and feel of the text, will not escape unmoved.

The Orphean Passages is a story of grace, of Jesus’ presence when mortals perceive only his absence. It is the story of Jesus working through people, and the action of faith by which one perceives his presence in people. Here is Wangerin’s premise, his definition of faith: “It is a relationship with the living God—enacted in this world, this world of the furious swirl, in which all things flow.”

The story of Pastor Orpheus enacting that relationship in the furious swirl of his inner-city ministry is a moving one. Better than any contemporary novelist I know, Wangerin lives inside his characters. Narrator and character so nearly merge, the reader too is drawn irresistibly into the life. The book has the feel of noble lives on mean streets.

Mystery Of Joy

As compelling as this theology through storytelling is, Wangerin owes us another volume—one dedicated to rejoicing. The Orphean Passages dips us into a sea of sorrow. Although the book ends on a note of joy, the note is too thin and distant, lacking a compelling part in the rhythm of life. The book, however mysterious, moving, and profound, cries for the theological mystery of profound joy.

“These things I have spoken to you,” said Jesus, “that my joy may be in you, and that your joy may be full.” Here is the mystery the second volume must plumb—the boundless laughter of infinite love and grace, the huge mirth with which God holds the Devil in derision. We yearn with Orpheus through his passages and recognize that he hasn’t completed them yet.

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