Few, if any, instruments shape national culture more powerfully than the materials used in schools. Textbooks are not only among the first books most people meet; in many places they are, along with religious texts, almost the only books they have. A study in South Africa showed that fewer than half of pupils had access to more than ten books at home. In 2010 a study by Egypt's government found that, apart from school textbooks, 88% of Egyptian households read no books.               The degree to which a government keeps control of the textbooks used in classrooms is a good guide to its commitment to ideological  control. Where that desire is strong, governments are likely to produce the textbooks themselves or define carefully what goes into them.               America's State Department employs people to keep an eye on other countries' textbooks, in an effort to understand better how their people think and what their governments want them to think. Other countries probably do the same.               Textbooks have long been a source of worry. After the attacks on America on September 11th 2001, some in both America and Saudi Arabia, including officials, supposed that Saudi Arabia's curriculum of intolerance was responsible, at least in part, for the emergence of al-Qaeda  .                Sometimes the requirements of the state are more clearly seen in what textbooks leave out. The world has long criticized Japan for the way its textbooks whitewash the country's history, in particular dressing up Japanese war crimes. The "New History Textbook", for example, which was submitted for government approval in 2000, played down Japan's aggression in the Sino-Japanese war of 1894-95 and the occupation of China in the 1930s and 1940s, and avoided mention of the use of sex slaves by its armies or the rape of Nanjing.  In America most of the disputes about textbooks are home-grown. Liberals worry that their children are being taught a nationalistic version of history that emphasizes the wonders of industrialization and plays down slavery and the killing of Indian tribes. By contrast, Conservatives complain about inadequate education of love for their country and too much secularism  . In 2010 the Texas board of education managed to remove Thomas Jefferson, author of the Declaration of Independence, from the state's list of important revolutionary figures, apparently because of Jefferson's insistence on the separation of church and state. He was, however, swiftly restored.               As long as textbooks are issued or approved by the state, they will remain a political issue. But as access to other textbooks is enjoyed more widely, some of the dominance they now enjoy will weaken. While talking about textbooks, the author seems to think that_.
they should be controlled by the government home-grown disputes are easier to settle they should be a political issue they are not necessarily so