Sure there are choices. Professors of all stripes must publish. But only a very small fraction get assigned as texts. In public schools it is generally what CA or TX approved for their kids. It is a racket.
You're conflating two different things, public primary schools might be inclined to go with what CA and TX choose for their own school systems but colleges, to include public ones, have much more leeway. Often it is the professor that chooses what is studied, as it was at my school for more advanced and specialized courses.
They are almost all progressive and left of center.
Really? Have you done a survey of college textbooks lately? Taught college? Or just heard a new report or two?
College is slightly different because a prof can assign most whatever he wants. Given the vast majority of liberal arts profs are left of center you will get that selection in a text....But if the prof professes and promotes a certain view point, especially by way of denigrating other view points, you ain't going to get many students to search out other sources to support a point of view contrary to the prof when he just told everyone anyone holding that view was a moran, immoral, intolerant and more. They just take the easy way out. Use the prof's resources, mimic his world view, get a good grade and get out. Better than working hard independently, get hammered on the grade and possibly publicly humiliated.
What kind of college did you go to?
We had a few of professors even at my school who were a bit left, though plenty that were a bit right too, but I can't think of a single one that graded on some sort of supposed political prejudices. Are there some out there that do that? Almost certainly, but the vast majority probably grade as mine did, based on the work of the student and not the politics. That included the unreformed hippie who liked to needle folks about the same-sex relationships among Greek hoplites in her history of warfare class and the biology professor who covered his walls in pictures of aborted fetuses.
But hey, if they are too lazy or lack the intellectual curiosity to actually go out and learn some more on a subject then they deserve whatever ignorance they posses beyond what they learn from a professor.
You went to college years ago. Your experiences may have been different. Mine certainly were. I have just had three kids complete a total of 15 years at university undergrad and graduate school. It is different out there Flash. Sadly so.
Maybe they should have gone to different schools or expanded their horizons beyond what they learned there.
Overall I find it amusing that somehow colleges and universities are apparently training grounds of radical leftism that is infecting our youth, turning them into Che-loving Marxists who want to overthrow our government via MSNBC and community organization. It is about as absurd as folks who think that the youth who enlist in the military or join the police are being infected by their fascist and racist leaders to hate the left and impose a fascist rule here at home and overseas.
