Many Saint Louis University students are significantly lighter in the wallet this week after completing their textbook-buying rituals for the semester. Most students have seen hundreds of dollars disappear through this activity. These textbooks are supposed to help give students immense knowledge, great understanding, and unique insight. Unfortunately, these books often give students slanted and biased viewpoints in a direct attempt to indoctrinate students with the authors’ political viewpoints. I have found this form of propaganda to be especially prevalent in arts and sciences textbooks. The bias of these authors is an overwhelmingly liberal one, with a special disdain for conservatives and Republicans.
Based on the political leanings of scholars and professors in the fields that make up the arts and sciences field, some of this bias should come as no surprise. Many scholars and professors in these fields have liberal and Democratic Party backgrounds, and some bias is inevitable. However, what I, and many other conservatives, find disturbing is that these textbooks often do not distinguish between the author’s opinion and proven facts. Authors seem to frequently intertwine selectively chosen facts with their own editorial viewpoints. Then, they present the result as well-established and widely accepted academic knowledge. This misdirection is usually given with the purposeful intent of swaying students toward an extremely liberal viewpoint.
This practice by some textbook authors is particularly regrettable because so many students often take the information in these textbooks as given truth. This is especially true when a student is taking a class in an area in which they have little prior knowledge. I have seen several examples of biased textbooks throughout my experience at SLU.
“Ronald Reagan was a scandal-plagued president who was not particularly popular by the end of his presidency and during the years afterward,” says Alan Brinkley’s American History: A Survey (2003). Such a statement is extremely biased and unsupported. Reagan left the presidency with an astronomical approval rating of 64 percent, and he has in the last two decades, been considered by some the greatest president since World War II. A student, knowing little about Reagan’s presidency, might accept the statement in this history text about Reagan’s unpopularity as fact. It is not fact, however, but instead a direct attempt to promote a negative image of Reagan. Such an unfounded statement from this author about the former president is not surprising, as Reagan was a conservative Republican, and conservative Republicans are often viewed as prime enemies to some authors.
Another biased textbook is Desmond Dinan’s European politics text, Ever Closer Union (2005). Dinan uses a chapter on European and U.S. relations to take repeated shots at President Bush and his administration. For several pages, he lets his readers know he thinks Bush’s economic and foreign policies are deplorable and bad for the United States and the world. He claims that many Europeans feel the same way about the Bush. This may be true, but Dinan offers no examples of any European making such harsh statements about Bush. After reading this chapter, it becomes perfectly clear that Dinan despises Bush and his policies. Unfortunately, he lets his anti-Bush diatribes take over and dominate a chapter that should have instead focused on serious issues of relations between Europe and the United States.
A third example of a clearly biased textbook is the theology text, The Powers That Be, by Walter Wink (1999). This book is supposed to be about theology, but Wink uses large segments of his book to share his distaste for Republicans, especially President Reagan and George H. W. Bush. He sees no need to stick to theology in his criticisms and ventures into attacks on these presidents’ economic and military policies. He makes his boldest and most questionable statement when he argues that middle class voters voted against their economic interests by voting for Reagan. He offers no evidence to support this statement and quickly descends into accusing President Bush of breaking the law by waging the Gulf War. A student would expect a theology textbook to talk mostly about theological issues. Unfortunately, for Walter Wink, bashing political figures is sort of a religion itself. Wink uses this textbook to try to indoctrinate students in his views, not to teach them about theology.
Ideally, students should be presented with balanced viewpoints in the assigned textbooks for their classes. However, this balance is often difficult to attain because it seems few non-liberals write textbooks in many areas of arts and sciences. Still, professors and administrators should at least attempt to select textbooks that present accurate and unbiased information as often as possible. As many students can attest from previous arts and sciences classes, some professors and departments do indeed make this effort. Unfortunately, other professors and departments seem totally comfortable with presenting students with some of the most radical and biased viewpoints in their field, especially liberal viewpoints. These professors are doing their students a disservice by presenting them a slanted viewpoint that encourages the students to give little thought to the possibility of dissenting points of view.
Universities should promote dialogue and debate on issues, not one-sided viewpoints. We do not pay thousands of dollars in tuition (and hundreds of dollars each semester for textbooks) to be educated into a certain belief. Unannounced, unsolicited political indoctrination has no place in classes, on SLU’s campus or in classes and colleges elsewhere. Our best line of defense to this indoctrination is to always keep an open mind and question supposed facts with which we are presented. Remember, simply because some doctor whose name is on the cover of your textbook, says something is established fact, does not necessarily mean it is so. Think for yourself. Decide for yourself.
John Witt is a freshman in the College of Arts and Sciences.
