The Gablers are not professional educators; indeed, neither of them went to

college. They are self-described "ordinary people" who were shocked one day by their 16-year-old's account of what was in his civics textbook, and wound up launching a campaign to oversee the content of Texas schoolbooks. It's partly, as Mr. Gabler puts it, "a matter of indoctrination. For instance, in the government textbooks you'll over and over have little sentences about the need for government control, government regulation, government power, etc.--never any emphasis on individualism." But it's also, as Mrs. Gabler says, "the lack of teaching the basic skills. That's not what makes the news. The articles that have been written about us are that we've taken books out of the library, taken dictionaries out. And the interesting thing is that we have spent our lives on the lack of the teaching of basic skills." Miss Bonnell, in turn, is shocked at folks like these presuming to criticize the professionals ("We all have the right to bad taste"). A lively, if not always well focused, hour.