To: Shilpi Niyogi, Senior Vice President , Pearson North America and Peter Cohen, President, School Education, McGraw-Hill
Stop censorship of climate science in new school textbooks!
Immediately correct all factual errors about climate change in social studies textbooks for K-12 students in Texas and across the country.
Why is this important?
Two major publishers have drafted new social studies textbooks for K-12 students in Texas that are filled with misinformation about climate change. Since Texas is the nation’s second largest buyer of textbooks, books produced for the state are often sold nationwide. The Texas State Board of Education is reviewing these books now, and will decide at its November meeting whether to approve them.
Among other egregious errors, the draft textbooks from publishers McGraw Hill and Pearson assert there is an active dispute among scientists about the primary cause of climate change. The climate change-denying Heartland Institute is given equal footing with the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, which integrates the work of thousands of credentialed, peer-reviewed scientists.
The publishers are responding to pressure from climate deniers on the Texas State Board of Education, who are determined to stop students from learning the overwhelming scientific consensus on climate change -- that it is happening now and caused by human activities, primarily the burning of fossil fuels.
Unless McGraw-Hill and Pearson correct the many factual errors about climate change before its books are presented to the Board next month, students across the country will be denied accurate information about the biggest global challenge their generation will face.
It’s crucial that we send a strong message right away that censoring climate science in order to sell books is unethical and an unacceptable disservice to students, and must be corrected.