BITTER PILL

Left, Right Rip New Texas Textbooks

Too much Moses, for one thing.

Everybody is unhappy with Texas’s new textbooks. Some think they are too negative about President George W. Bush or too positive about Hillary Clinton. Some think there’s too much about Moses. The complaints surfaced during a hearing Tuesday by the influential State Board of Education that will vote on approving the textbooks in November. According to a Southern Methodist University historian, the textbooks feature Moses everywhere because of a curriculum requirement the board wrote four years ago that required more coverage of Moses and Mosaic Law in textbooks. The dustups over Texas textbooks have garnered national attention because the state is one of the largest textbook purchasers in the country, and so publishers tend to create education texts for many states based on what Texas does.