The Textbook Wars

IT HAS become one of journalism’s autumn perennials: Book-burners are conspiring to relegate our children to ignorance. Read a bit further in the articles and, almost invariably, the would-be censors turn out to be conservatives.

Most book protests do indeed originate with the Right. Contrary to censorship experts, however, that’s not because conservatives alone seek to inject their views into the classroom. Liberals are no less eager to shape schoolbooks; they just go about it differently.