Truth in Texas Textbooks

A Summary of Findings of Factual Errors, Omission of Facts,

Half-Truths & Agenda Bias in World History, World Geography & World Cultures

Submitted by the Publishers for TEA Proclamation 2015

Cengage/National Geographic World Cultures and Geography (Gr 6) (23 of 147)

  • In2Books brings the Common Core Standards to life with a safe motivating online curriculum that matches students with adult eMentors. Students get authentic experience purposefully reading books with eMentors and sharing ideas about important issues via online letters.
  • Common Core is illegal in the State of Texas, therefore this textbook should be rejected on that basis alone. Adult pen pals are not appropriate for eleven-twelve year olds even if approved by the teacher. Teacher must sign (accept) a legal agreement before he/she is allowed to access this textbook.
  • The National Geographic videos are too coarse for adults, much less 6th graders, dealing with drugs, drug busts, methane, and custody issues for example. And there is an advertisement before every video and throughout the text, distracting the students from the real purpose of learning. Taxpayers and parents should not agree to make Texas public school students a captured marketing audience for any publisher. Ads included Subaru, Ford, National Geographic magazines(even for kids), Apple products, Zulily, Cobblestone magazines, Facebook, Twitter, BASF just to name a few. Must allow the website to store information on the user’s personal computer in order to view videos.
  • Clicking Connect to NG>National Geographic Current Events>News opens a new window and navigates to the National Geographic website for links to unfiltered current event news stories. From here, a student can navigate anywhere on the web.
  • Program Consultants v. Reviewers of Religious Content. Shabbir Mansuri, Institute on Religion and Civic Values, Fountain Valley, California.
  • Omitted is that Mansuri founded the Council on Islamic Education before changing its name to Institute on Religious and Civic Values.(IRCV). IRCV proselytizes for Islam in the public schools and excludes Islam’s violent jihadist characteristics. Mansuri is endorsed by Hamas-supporting Muslim Brotherhood organization Council on American Islamic Relations (CAIR).
  • It’s easy to get depressed about Climate Change. The Current cycle of Global Warming is changing the rhythms of climate that all living things have come to rely upon.
  • Climate Change is a theory and is promoted as fact throughout this textbook
  • Titles of video inside the “Animals” heading: Are Mites having sex on my face?
  • Before EVERY video the student must watch a 30-60 second advertisement. Website touts 1000’s of videos
  • Picture of Mosque and farming villages, great Rift Valley, Eritrea
  • Eritrea has both Islam and Christianity as primary religions. Therefore there could also be a picture of a Christian church.
  • Photo of Blue Mosque
  • The lack of photos of churches eliminates the history of Christianity in Turkey. “Although Turkey is now 98-99% Muslim, there are still major historical Christian churches in Istanbul. Among them are: The Saint Antony Church, The Saint Antony Church, The Greek Orthodox Patriarchate, Surp Kirkor Lusarovic Armenian Orthodox Church and Virgin Mary Suryani Church. Any one of these would provide the student with examples of Turkish architecture as well as some of the history of Christianity in Turkey.” No pictures of synagogues. This totally eliminates the history of the Jews in Turkey which predates the history of both Christianity and Islam in Asia Minor. There are a number of notable synagogues in Istanbul whose pictures could have been included. Among them are: Neve Shalom Synagogue, Ahrida Synagogue, Yanbol Synagogue. There has been a Jewish community in Turkey (Asia Minor) since the 4th century B.C. such as in Sardis. According to the Old Testament, the prophet Abraham was born in Ur in Chaldea. Near the Euphrates (Firat) river, there is a historic and ancient city called Sanliurfa whose initial name was Ur. Jewish communities in Asia Minor continued to prosper throughout the Turkish conquest under Seljuks and Ottomans. Today Turkey's total Jewish population is around 26,000 (the second largest Jewish community in a Muslim country, being the first is Iran), with a great majority living in Istanbul.
  • The United States was the first modern country to establish a representative democracy.
  • The United States formed a “Constitutional Republic.”
  • Settlers carried diseases such as smallpox, which the native people could not fight. Disease killed a large percentage of certain Native American populations.
  • No mention that the Indians also had diseases that spread among the settlers.
  • The American Revolution had created the United States of America.
  • The Treaty of Paris did not create the United States of America. It recognized colonies represented by a Continental Congress. The United States of America was created by the Constitutional Convention
  • Experts try to predict when the United States will use up all of its own oil supply, and they don’t all agree. However, they do agree that the demand for oil is growing, rapidly shrinking the supply of this nonrenewable resource. Some expert say that as early as 2020, there won’t be enough oil in the United States for everyone who wants it.
  • Other experts say the US has enough oil to last for several hundred years.
  • When Islam came to Africa beginning in the A.D. 700s, some Muslim began to capture and sell Africans to North Africa and Southwest Asia.
  • Islam didn’t “come” to Africa; it arrived by military conquest. No mention of the size and duration of the Arab Muslim slave trade.
  • Islam spread through expansion of Muslim rule and through trade.
  • Omitted is that Muslim rule expanded by jihad conquest.
  • The Ottomans were Muslim and they spread Islam throughout the empire. They were known for their religious tolerance. Existing religious groups maintained their own practices and communities within the empire.
  • Omitted is discussion of the Janissary Corps and Suleiman’s devschirme, the levy of Christian boys who never saw their parents again after being forced into the Sultan’s military and administrative service. Omitted also is the heavy taxation of Christians and the destruction of thousands of schools and religious structures.
  • The coalition believed that Iraq was concealing weapons of mass destruction. Although none were found, the coalition removed Hussein from power.
  • Omitted is that Hussein had dismantled some nuclear facilities that could have produced weapons grade bomb material had they been allowed to continue operation. Also omitted is that Hussein prevented further inspections. Omitted is that Hussein’s chemical weapons stockpiles have been found recently.
  • On September 11, 2001, 19 al-Qaeda terrorists, or people who use violence to achieve political results, hijacked four U.S. airplanes. They flew the planes into the towers of the World Trade Center in New York City and the Pentagon in Washington D.C. A plane headed for the White House crashed in a Pennsylvania field. In response, the United States and its allies bombed terrorist camps in Afghanistan. The Taliban were removed from power and a new government was established, but the violent conflict continued.
  • Omitted is that al-Qaeda terrorists are Islamic jihadists and the definition of a terrorist is incomplete. al-Qaeda jihadi terrorists are murderers who usually target civilians in order to strike terror in a civilian population to achieve their political ends. And, as the Jihadists themselves point out, they make no distinction between religion and politics.
  • One thousand years later, the Mughal Empire was established in 1526 by Babur. Mughal rulers practiced Islam and came form Central Asia. Islam became a unifying force in South Asia and grew into a large religious minority.
  • Islam did not unify. It conquered. It became a large religious minority because the Mughals murdered millions of Hindus. “As a contribution to research on the quantity of the Islamic crimes against humanity, we may mention Prof. K.S. Lal's estimates about the population figures in medieval India (Growth of Muslim Population in India). According to his calculations, the Indian (subcontinent) population decreased by 80 million between 1000 (conquest of Afghanistan) and 1525 (end of Delhi Sultanate).”
  • Islam was founded in Saudi Arabia, but it quickly spread to South Asia.
  • Again, the text omits that Islam spread by jihad.A simple re-write of the sentence would correct the omission: “but the Arab armies quickly brought it to South Asia.”
  • Islam arrived with Muslim traders in the early A.D. 700’s.
  • Islam arrived with the Arab Muslim armies in the early A.D. 700’s.
  • In order to profit from India’s rich natural resources, the British used trade practices that favored Britain, They shipped India’s raw material back to England and forced India to import British goods. The British also treid to prevent Indian manufactueres from producing certain goods that British manufacturer made, so that only British goods could be sold. This crippled India’s economic growth for more than 100 years.
  • The paragraph tells only the bad side of the British. Omitted are the British contributions that made it possible for an India fragmented by hundreds of political states to enter the modern world as a nation. It is unsubstantiated opinion that Britain crippled India’s economic growth for more than 100 years. British railroads unified India, as did the English language. The British were responsible for roads, telephone, telegraph, dams, bridges, irrigation canals, schools, improved sanitation and public health.
  • Encouraged by this initial success, Mao set a plan in motion the following year called the Great Leap Forward to make China’s economy grow even faster.
  • Omitted is mention that, according to Communist Party archives, Mao’s Great Leap Forward ‘killed 45 million in four years’ Mao Zedong, founder of the People’s Republic of China, qualifies as the greatest mass murderer in world history.
  • Those who did not comply (with one-child policy) had to pay large fines
  • China’s one-child policy has been described as arguably the greatest bioethical atrocity on the globe.” Since the 1970s, the Chinese government has conducted a program of population control through forced abortion, infanticide, forced sterilization, forced use of abortifacient birth control, abandonment of children and deliberate killing of orphans through neglect. The program is enforced through severe penalties for those who do not comply with the policy, including extortionate fines, destruction of property, imprisonment and even torture.

Discovery World Geography & Cultures (Gr 6) (12 of 22)

  • “In the 600s and 700s, Arabic language, Arabic culture, and Islamic religion spread to all of the countries in this region.”
  • This sentence contains the bias in that there is deliberate Chronological Revisionism, which removes the jihad inherent in the spread of Islam. The Arabic language, Arabic culture and Islamic religion did not just “spread” to all of the countries. Islam spread first, primarily by sword, culture and language followed.
  • “Though Christianity is the dominant religion in North America, there are different types of Christians.”
  • Christianity is a belief in Jesus Christ as the Son of God. There is only one type of Christian though groups may practice their belief differently. Over the centuries, Christianity has divided into numerous denominations. Each denomination has its own distinctive beliefs or practices, but they are commonly considered branches of the same religion because they agree on such fundamentals as the Bible, the Trinity, and the person of Christ.
  • “Another consequence of burning fossil fuels is climate change, a long-term change in the average temperatures of the earth’s atmosphere. The gases that are released when fossil fuels are burned stay in earth’s atmosphere and help to trap sunlight, which raises average temperatures all over the world. Many scientists think that the rising temperatures will have a negative effect on life on Earth.”
  • Scientists are divided on this issue. According to the US Senate Committee on Environment & Public Works, over 400 prominent scientists from more than two dozen countries have voiced significant objections to major aspects of the so-called "consensus" on man-made global warming. These scientists, many of whom are current and former participants in the UN IPCC (Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change), criticized the climate claims made by the UN IPCC and former Vice President Al Gore. According to NASA, throughout its long history, Earth has warmed and cooled time and again. Climate has changed when the planet received more or less sunlight due to subtle shifts in its orbit, as the atmosphere or surface changed, or when the Sun’s energy varied. But in the past century, another force has started to influence Earth’s climate: humanity. Global warming is the unusually rapid increase in Earth’s average surface temperature over the past century primarily due to the greenhouse gases released by people burning fossil fuels.
  • “The United States and Canada, its neighbor to the north, share much more than a long border. Both countries, for example, have similar governments based on representative democracy. A democracy is a government in which citizens have decision-making power. In a representative democracy, citizens exercise their power indirectly, by choosing leaders to make governing decisions for them.” “While both the United States and Canada have representative democratic and federal systems, their governments do differ. The United States is a presidential democracy.” Mexico—like its neighbor to the north, the United States—is a presidential republic, where the president is directly elected as a representative of the people.”
  • The United States is a Constitutional Republic. Though we have a representative form of government, it’s not a representative democracy. Mexico is a Federal Representative Republic.
  • All maps depict Turkey inaccurately and the Religion Map indicates it is primarily of Eastern Orthodox religion. The line drawn from the label to the country indicates that Turkey is the portion west of Istanbul ignoring Turkey’s land mass to the east of Istanbul. According to the World Population Review; the main religion of Turkey, followed by 99.8% of the population, is Islam, while other religions are followed by the minute .02% of the population.
  • Unfortunately for these countries, the effects of climate change—including heavy rains, droughts, higher temperatures, diseases, and pests—are hurting the coffee industry.
  • Climate change is not the reason for changes in rainfall, and global warming is a fallacy. According to NASA data, up to 95 percent of solar radiation is literally bounced back into space by both CO2 and NO in the upper atmosphere. Without these necessary elements, in other words, the earth would be capable of absorbing potentially devastating amounts of solar energy that would truly melt the polar ice caps and destroy the planet.
  • As demand for gas in Southeast Asia rises and developed countries around the world look for cleaner alternatives to oil, production of natural gas in the region will likely rise in importance.
  • Most pollution can be mitigated by current technology. The text fails to state facts about how pollution can be mitigated, how infrastructure such as proper & sewer drainage systems, water purification plants. No mention of mitigation by use of coal scrubbers, industrial air cleaning mechanisms. Natural gas will be good alternative when the mechanism is in place to make it readily available and efficient. It does not mention the lack of expertise, financial means and motivation to solve the existing problems. They have been mitigated or solve in other countries, cities. Insinuates that problem is not able to be solved.
  • War is a form of organized violence. War has many different causes.
  • According to Websters, war: a state of armed conflict between different nations or states or different groups within a nation or state. War is sometimes a matter of self-defense, protection of person and property. Diplomacy is not always a working solution. Organized violence is a biased and negative description of war which ignores that at times war is necessary and does not include the difference between an acts of violence, aggression and war.
  • The Muslim conquest lasted in various forms from the 600s to the 1600s. Though the Islamic armies did not force people in conquered areas to convert, the wars spread their religion throughout the world.
  • Muslims are commanded to fight unbelievers “infidels” until they are either dead, converted to Islam or in a permanent state of subjugation or Dhimmitude. Islam was spread by jihad. The Muslims were not under attack. They were waging aggressive imperialist warfare for the purpose of establishing the world-wide supremacy of Islam, as mandated in the Qur’an and the hadith. Qur’an 8:39; Qur’an 9:29; Sahih Muslim 1:33.
  • From 1096 to the late 1200s, Christians from several European countries waged a series of wars against Muslims in Palestine to gain control of a region called the Holy Land, where the Christian religion was founded.
  • The statement is a perfect example of Islamist Revisionism of the history of the Crusades. The Crusades were not fought by the Christians to “gain control” of the Holy Land but rather to take back control which had been wrested from them by the Muslims. The Arab Muslims conquered Palestine in 636. They were intolerant of Jews and Christians. With the launching of the Crusades, the Christians took back the region in 1099 and dominated it until the Mamluk Muslims, who originated in Egypt, took it in 1291.
  • However, in reality, the Nationalist Party established a dictatorship under Chiang Kai-shek. In contrast, Mao advocated the communist doctrine—an ideology that promoted state control of politics and the economy for the good of the common person.
  • Communism - a system of social organization in which all economic and social activity is controlled by a totalitarian state dominated by a single and self-perpetuating political party. Utopian concept (Websters, Encyclopedia Britanica). Biased definition that makes communism seem benevolent. Does not address true human condition that arises in communist nations
  • When Israel declared its independence in 1948, Arab states including Egypt launched a war. In the end, the Israeli forces were victorious, but many Palestinians were forced from their homes. In another war between Israel and Arab states, including Egypt, in 1967, Israel managed to conquer Egypt’s Sinai Peninsula and extend its borders even further.
  • The textbook does not include pertinent information. Israel did not just declare its independence. Students need to learn the following history of the United Nations Resolution to Partition Palestine. Britain was never able to resolve the contradictory aspirations of Arabs and Jews in Palestine and following World War II, escalating hostilities between Arabs and Jews and violence against the British in Palestine compelled Britain to relinquish its mandate over Palestine. The British requested that the recently established United Nations determine the future of Palestine. On November 29, 1947, the UN General Assembly voted to terminate the British Mandate for Palestine and to partition Palestine into two states, one Jewish and the other Arab. The proposed plan was accepted by the leaders of the Jewish community in Palestine. It was rejected by leaders of the Arab community (the Palestine Arab Higher Committee), who were supported in their rejection by the Arab League. The armies that invaded Israel on May 15, 1948 were from Lebanon, Egypt, Syria, Saudi Arabia, and Jordan. Iraq also declared war and Libya and Yemen sent volunteers—eight Arab countries in all fought against Israel. As concerns the Palestinians “forced from their homes” what is missing here is the fact that most who fled did so at the instigation of their own local leaders and those of the five Arab nations that attacked Israel.” Many Palestinians stayed; that is why there are about 1.4 million Arabs living in Israel as Israeli citizens today. The reason why those who fled were forced to settle in “refugee camps”, some of which are now viable cities, is that none of the neighboring Arab countries would take them in. They became pawns in the Arab exterminationist campaign against the Jews. A critical fact is missing concerning the 1967 Six Day War. Israel offered to negotiate after the Six Day War and that the Arab response at a meeting held in August 1967 in Khartoum was “no recognition, no negotiation, and no peace with Israel.” Furthermore, Israel subsequently returned more than 90 percent of the territories won in the 1967 war after negotiations with its neighbors. As before, its neighbors rejected Israel’s offers to trade land for peace.

Houghton Mifflin Harcourt World History (high school) (20 of 20)