Be sure to read Dan Walter's Sacramento Bee column about the legislature being swayed by various groups to make certain they are portrayed in a positive light in school textbooks.

One by one, California's many ethnic and cultural communities have sought legislation that requires schoolchildren to be taught about their "role and contributions" in the state's history, and also bans instruction that depicts them negatively.

To date the list singled out for mandatory attention are "men and women, black Americans, American Indians, Mexicans, Asians, Pacific Island people and other ethnic groups" while another section of state school law bans instruction "which reflects adversely upon persons because of their race, sex, color, creed, handicap, national origin or ancestry" and still another prohibits textbooks or other materials "reflecting adversely" on the same grounds.

Essentially, therefore, students must be told about certain groups, but cannot receive any instruction deemed to be negative, which is why, for instance, the Hindu American Foundation is now suing the state to block printing and distribution of new sixth-grade textbooks that are, the group maintains, demeaning to Hindus. Specifically, the foundation doesn't like the textbooks' depiction of women's historically inferior status, the treatment of "untouchables" in the Indian caste system and the theory that Aryan migration played a major role in Indian cultural development.

Dan is absolutely right. These interest groups are perverting our children's textbooks just to promote their own political agenda. Dan also points out that SB1437, a bill which would require positive treatment of gay and lesbian issues in textbooks, is basically the same issue.

The Legislature's dictating cultural propaganda of any kind to be distributed in the classroom is troubling. It's troubling when the cultural identification is homosexuality, and it's troubling when - as another legislative bill this year would require - the group singled out for special attention is Italian American.

History is history. Some of it is positive and some of it is negative, human imperfection being what it is. But the negative aspects are just as important as the positive ones. Together, they comprise the entire story of how a society develops. We should want our children to emerge from the classroom with the full story written by fair-minded and authoritative historians, not one that has been officially sanitized and litigated to please those with enough political pull to get the law changed in their favor.

It's a slippery slope, down which California probably has slid too far already.