Monthly editor Mariah Blake recently wrote a piece for the magazine, “Revisionaries,” about the power that conservatives on the Texas State Board of Education wield over the textbook market across the country.
Well the group is at it again. According to an article published today in the Dallas Morning News, the Texas State Board of Education recently decided to remove Bill Martin from its list of approved children’s authors.
Board member Pat Hardy made the motion to cut Martin, explaining that he should be removed because he had written books that include “very strong critiques of capitalism and the American system.”
This removed the Brown Bear series from the Texas curriculum. Brown Bear, Brown Bear, What Do You See? is a children’s picture book by Bill Martin, Jr., published in 1967, to help toddlers learn to read by connecting colors and meanings to objects. Martin was the author of more than 300 books for children.
While Hardy’s logic is questionable (heaven forbid one might learn about someone criticizing capitalism) she actually got the wrong guy.
The Bill Marin that worries Hardy is a philosophy professor at DePaul University. He is the author of Ethical Marxism: The Categorical Imperative of Liberation. This was the book that included “very strong critiques of capitalism.” It was published in 2008.
Bill Martin of the Brown Bear books died in 2004.
