Campaign to Eliminate Bias from American Textbooks Reported Successful

A ten-year campaign sponsored by educational leaders representing Protestant, Catholic and Jewish groups has proved successful in eliminating from the public, private and parochial school textbooks of the United States virtually all passages regarded as biased from the standpoint of race or religion, it was reported today by the Rev. Dr. Willard Johnson, assistant to the president of the National Conference of Christians and Jews.

Clergymen and educators, working quietly, have succeeded in changing the approach toward racial and religious questions taken by textbook writers and publishers. This has been done by agreeing upon and pointing out the existence of anti-Catholic, anti-Protestant or anti-Jewish passages. Now almost no complaints are raised concerning public textbooks, and few regarding the private or parochial school books.

As the next step, the educators in charge of this program are sponsoring new teaching and classroom materials in which the subject of intolerance is handled constructively. New concepts of citizenship and group relationships are included in the textbook materials and are being adopted in American schools.

The campaign to eliminate offensive passages from textbooks was conducted under the direction of the National Conference of Christians and Jews. The Federal Council of Churches of Christ in America, the International Council of Religious Education and the American Jewish Committee cooperated in the work.