Norma Gabler, Textbook Censor: 1923-2007

Censorship of public school textbooks is a key way the Christian Right in America has sought to both promote its ideological agenda and to keep children ignorant of the real world. Fortunately for them, censoring textbooks all across America has been made relatively easy: because of the buying power and size of Texas, they have only needed to get Texas to reject a book to ensure that it probably won't appear anywhere at all.

Among the first pioneers were Norma and Mel Gabler who took it upon themselves to personally review textbooks submitted to the Texas state board of education. They argued vociferously against those books which dared to teach the truth not only about evolution and science, but other matters which they insisted were contrary to Christianity — or at least their own narrow brand of Christianity. As a consequence, an entire generation of American children were short-changed in their education.

The Gablers were first to seize on the Texas textbook process as a means of pushing their conservative principles, and their success baffled and angered civil liberties advocates and progressive educators. Publishers, with much to lose if Texas rejected their books, were often willing to make changes to please the Gablers. Richard Morgan, president of Macmillan’s school division, said in a 1983 interview with The Times, “Not making the list in Texas is not a good sign.”

Mrs. Gabler, always with a smile and careful, precise diction, usually testified at textbook hearings rather than her shyer husband, Mel. She argued for more instruction in morality, free-enterprise economics, phonetics and weaknesses in evolutionary theory. ...Why did a history textbook give more space to the French Revolution than to the American Revolution? Were not Vietnam and Watergate overemphasized? Was Robin Hood a hero, as the text claimed, or a dangerous advocate of income redistribution? ...

Together, they were “the most effective textbook censors in the country,” Creation/Evolution, a publication of the National Center for Science Education, said in 1982. It went on to point out that while the Gablers derided textbooks that left out alternatives to evolution, they opposed alternative interpretations of American history they deemed negative. They objected to an Edgar Allan Poe story as gruesome. Texts that raised questions without firm answers were suspect.

Source: The New York Times

The Gablers had a long run as self-appointed textbook censors. They began looking for signs of "secular humanism" in texts as early as 1961. By 1969 they scored their first big success by getting a standard biology text removed from Texas schools because of its presentation of evolution. In 1973 they "incorporated" themselves as the Educational Research Analysts. By 1974, their ideas were included in the Texas Education Policy Act which stipulated that no biology text would be adopted by the state unless it prominently described evolution as a theory rather than a fact. As recently as 2003, Norma Gabler was involved in Texas textbook reviews.

To be fair, the Gablers did find and point out numerous factual errors in various textbooks, and sometimes those errors persisted despite efforts to get them corrected. They also pointed out real oddities, like a history text that spent more time on Marilyn Monroe than George Washington. You don't need to be part of the Christian Right to suspect that there's something very wrong about that.

For all the good they might have done, though, they wrought far more harm with ideological attacks on history, sociology, and science. They poisoned American eduction by leveraging the power of Texas book purchases in a manner that harmed schools and children across the nation. They promoted both ignorance and lies in order to defend ancient superstitions and outdated beliefs about reality. Although obituaries for Norma Gabler describe her censorship efforts, they do little to explain just how much damage her religious crusade caused and continues to cause.

PZ Myers has a long list of the outrageous lies which the Gablers used to block the teaching of genuine science in Texas, thus helping raise a generation of students who would be sure to be ignorant of not just evolutionary biology, but basic science as well. The lies and distortions which the Gablers used for decades to object to teaching evolution in science classes continue to be used by creationist groups — including those in Texas which will persist in their censorship of school textbooks even after Norma Gabler's passing. Her legacy of ideological censorship and ignorance will live on long after her.