Mel and Norma Gabler
Mel and Norma Gabler were a Texas-based couple who became influential figures in the debate over educational content in American schools, particularly regarding textbook content. Their journey began in 1965 when they were motivated by concerns over what they perceived as a decline in moral values and patriotism among students, sparked by a history textbook they found lacking in its treatment of states' rights. They founded Educational Research Analysts, which grew from a small operation in their home into a recognized organization advocating for specific educational standards across the United States.
The Gablers became known for their staunch opposition to what they termed "secular humanism," arguing that public school textbooks had removed traditional American values, such as Christianity and patriotism. Their efforts included attending state textbook hearings in Texas, where they presented extensive objections to various textbooks, leading to significant alterations in content nationwide. Despite facing accusations of censorship, they maintained that they were fighting against biased educational materials, asserting that textbooks should reflect the values of the majority.
The Gablers' work garnered national attention, resulting in multiple television appearances and a wide network of supporters. Although Mel passed away in 2004 and Norma in 2007, their legacy continues through their organization, which still advocates for the principles they championed during their lifetimes.
Mel and Norma Gabler
Identification: Husband and wife leaders of a grassroots movement to review school textbook adoptions
Significance: The Gablers achieved remarkable success in their self-proclaimed mission to cleanse the nation’s public schools of ideas that threaten their own conservative religious and patriotic beliefs
Mel Gabler, a retired Exxon employee, and his wife, Norma, began their crusade in 1965, when they first observed a “weakening of the moral fiber” and a “lack of patriotic reinforcement” among public school students in their home state of Texas. According to their own account, they awakened to the faults in school textbooks one day when their son brought home a history text that discussed only the powers that are held by the federal government, without addressing states’ rights. Although neither Gabler claimed expertise in any academic discipline, they founded Educational Research Analysts, which operated out of their home in Longview, Texas.
Within a few years, the Gablers claimed to be “recognized authorities on textbook content,” as well as the voices for millions of persons in mainstream America. From their organization’s humble beginnings as a mom-and-pop textbook review service, Educational Research Analysts grew into a full-time operation and took up most of the space in the Gablers’ home. Eventually, the Gablers would be featured on such national television broadcasts as The Phil Donahue Show, Nightline, and The Today Show. They would also become subjects of articles in periodicals as diverse as Fundamentalist Journal, People, and The Wall Street Journal. They would even receive a variety of awards, such as the Texas Senate Award of Appreciation, and Mel Gabler would become a national delegate to the White House Conference on Families.
The Gablers’ speaking engagements across the United States, donations from an estimated sixteen thousand like-minded activists, and dissemination of photocopied information packets earned their nonprofit organization more than $100,000 each year. The Gablers received a hundred letters a day from supporters throughout the United States and from more than forty other countries; some correspondents requested as many as two hundred copies of their information packets. The Gablers’ speaking tours addressed concerned parents and community leaders, who were encouraged to become more involved in the education of the nation’s children and to monitor reading materials more closely, even in religious schools.
Texas Textbook Adoptions
Because the state of Texas had a universal adoption policy for textbooks and a $45 million annual budget for purchasing textbooks, it was a force to be reckoned with in the textbook publishing business, and other states often saved money by adopting Texas-approved editions. Its state board of education encouraged public discussion to provide students with less-biased sources of information. Each year open textbook hearings were held in the state capital of Austin; however, these hearings focused only on objections to textbook adoptions, and not comments in support of particular books. After examining hundreds of textbooks and appraising their presumed educational value, the Gablers attended the state hearings, armed with hundreds of pages of objections to particular texts. Gabler later claimed that before he and his wife became involved in Texas’ textbook-adoption process, textbooks had been considered “classroom ready”; after they became involved, the books were listed as merely “format finished.”
Although the Gablers stated that they were only patriotic citizens seeking to save the children, they almost singlehandedly forced several companies to rewrite textbooks for the entire country. One such set of books was a series entitled Justice in America, designed for use in eighth-grade citizenship classes. Some of the Gablers’ objections to that series were that one volume featured an illustration of a person burning a flag, and another depicted a mock welfare application without providing information that reinforced the work ethic.
Many people have charged that the Gablers institutionalized textbook censorship in Texas. Indeed, in 1979 the American School Board Journal cited them as perhaps the two most powerful individuals in American education. In 1983 the Encyclopedia Britannica Book of the Year included the Gablers among ninety-five persons it judged as having had a worldwide impact the previous year.
Secular Humanism
The Gablers argued that “secular humanism” had pervaded public school systems, purging the textbooks of traditional American values, such as Christianity, patriotism, free enterprise, and traditionally prescribed gender roles in marriage. Furthermore, they claimed that textbooks—in conjunction with proselytizing teachers—were indoctrinating students in secular humanist beliefs, promoting values change, and contributing to a permissive society. According to Mel Gabler, “the only thing the humanists [were] absolute about is that there [were] no absolutes.” He insisted that schoolchildren were being forced to discover their own values, based on individual situations and, often, peer pressure. In addition, he cited time spent on activities he considered a waste of time, such as values change, discussions of modern literature, and the reinforcement of self-esteem, as the root of lowered academic skills and Scholastic Aptitude Test (SAT) scores.
The Gablers particularly objected to books containing lengthy discussions of topics such as women’s suffrage, the women’s movement, slavery, the Civil Rights movement, trade unions, ecology, world hunger, the American Indian experience, the Watergate scandal, poverty, one-world government, world peace, and Communism. For them, textbooks should be conduits of moral, thus sacrosanct, education, and they argued that the books should teach only absolute—not relativistic—values. Perhaps surprisingly, the Gablers have not championed any one theory of creation over another—whether biblical, evolutionary, or mythological. They have insisted only that the teaching of evolution as a scientific theory is permissible only so long as contrary theories are given equal time. However, critics noted that in other areas they objected to the presentation of theories contrary to aspects of American history they supported.
The Gablers as Opponents of Censorship
Mel Gabler claimed that traditional American values had been deleted from textbooks before they ever reached his office. After examining hundreds of textbooks, line by line, that were considered suitable for kindergarten through high school, he asserted that “we can unequivocally state that the values and beliefs held by the vast majority of Americans have been censored from textbooks. Censorship has resulted in textbooks with biased content. Students receive only one side of an issue but believe they are receiving enough pertinent information to give them a balanced education.” He emphatically asserted that he and his wife were not censors, but rather fighters against censorship. He felt that textbooks should not point to America’s weaknesses; instead, they should point to America’s strengths. The Gablers also held that their goal was to find and correct factual errors in textbooks, which they did in addition to advocating their more subjective viewpoints.
Mel Gabler died in 2004 and Norma Gabler died in 2007, but their Educational Research Analysts organization lived on, continuing their work.
Bibliography
Gabler, Mel, Norma Gabler, and James C. Hefley. What Are They Teaching Our Children? Wheaton: Victor, 1985. Print.
Hefley, James C. Are Textbooks Harming Your Children? Milford: Mott, 1979. Print.
Holley, Joe. "Textbook Activist Mel Gabler, 89." Washington Post. Washington Post, 23 Dec. 2004. Web. 18 Nov. 2015.
Martin, Douglas. "Norma Gabler, Leader of Crusade on Textbooks, Dies at 84." New York Times. New York Times, 1 Aug. 2007. Web. 18 Nov. 2015.
"Our Mission." Educational Research Analysts. Educational Research Analysts, 2015. Web. 18 Nov. 2015.