Textbooks Offer Both Sides!!!

Maybe that would have made both a good headline and story, contrary to my earlier comment on this Sacramento Bee article. Some are unhappy that some plastic bag industry input was accepted as part of the issue of plastic bag pollution in state school textbooks.

One guy commented he couldn't understand what in the article gave me the impression the writer was upset the textbooks would at least give some print to the other side of the issue. I gave a rather convoluted rebuttal, made worse by the formatting not working right when I posted it and it ended up in one large paragraph.

After making my rebuttal I realized my answer could have been much shorter: If school textbooks routinely show both sides of an issue, the fact that they included the other side in this instance -after plastic industry input- wouldn't be worthy of the news coverage it got.

The comments to the San Francisco Chronicle's version of the story, which is pretty much verbatim, makes my case. Most of the comments I've read there seem to be from people who are livid that the folks who put together the textbooks "caved" to industry pressure and allowed some of their view to be included in the book. A typical comment:

"Under pressure- whether you like the bags or not the "California school officials" are spine-less worms."

Enough said.