Texas Votes Against Fact-Checking Textbooks; Exactly No One is Surprised

Oh, Texas. In a move that surprised literally no one from Texas, the Texas Board of Education voted not to fact-check textbooks anymore. It’s been a frequent complaint of people everywhere that Texas textbooks are akin to garbage, frequently misleading and often downright false. As someone who was raised and educated in Texas, I’ve quietly been disappointed while watching academic standards slide since 2010 (I graduated high school in 2008), but this recent decision to not allow experts input in education is a new level of crazy.

We need to be worried about the kids being educated in Texas public schools right now. Since my own high school graduation, I’ve experienced moments when I learned something new and wondered who was lying to me — my teachers in Texas or the current media? Often times, after some fact-checking of my own, I realized that my teachers in Texas had had to tell me ludicrous things like that no STDs/STIs are curable (not true, some are) and that the abortions always render you infertile for life (also false). Abstinence, you guys.

But these were the only blatant falsehoods I’ve found in my educational background (I do worry that there are more). What is going to happen to this new generation of students who never learn the word ‘slave,’ only ‘worker’? How will someone explain to them why we celebrate Martin Luther King Jr. Day if teachers aren’t allowed to teach the Civil Rights Movement or why it was necessary? How will they react when they learn that evolution is a valid existing theory — and the scientific definition of the word ‘theory’ as ‘something we’re fairly sure is true but can’t prove 100%’ not ‘maybe this could happen but God is real so it didn’t’?

What is going to happen to the academic futures of students taught in this system? If they don’t know what slaves were and how biology works (because God), will they even be able to be admitted to academically rigorous schools outside of Texas? Will these students only be able to flourish in a Texas private Christian school like Baylor, no matter their actual religion, or will they flounder and panic when they attend basically any institution outside of Texas who teaches that slaves were captured and brought here against their will? Will out-of-state universities like Columbia or UCLA still even accept these students, or will they look at Texas curriculums and say, “Who cares if Dawn and Luis got straight As in 8 AP classes a year and were captain of every club and sport — they were taught a fictionalized version of how the world works and we don’t have room for the lack of educational basis in our university.” Will universities be reluctant to teach students from Texas public schools, or will they force them through remedial classes? Can universities put pressure on the Texas Board of Education to stop putting falsehoods in kids’ primary textbooks, lest the kids not be able to handle college?

Beyond that, what happens to these students after college? I suppose history can’t repeat itself if no one knows what history was, but what happens when these kids talk to anyone educated outside of Texas, ever? Are we going to start seeing a rise in the number of Texan young adults in therapy, feeling depressed, disoriented, and out of control when they realize every “fact” they were taught during their 12 years in primary school was designed to trick them into believing in a fiction-based conservative worldview? Or are we going to build a wall around Texas and not let the next generation leave (or let anyone else in for that matter) so no one communicates with each other? I guess Texas could always secede and become North America’s North Korea.

This kind of fictionalized history can’t be sustained. With the access these students have to the truth online and to dozens of articles that point out what a farce Texas history education is, I can only hope there will be Texan students who see what they’re being taught is ludicrous and want change. How long until the students push back? Will Texas kids stand up and demand to be taught real history? And how will the administration handle that?

Perhaps this is the only way we can make the Texas Board of Education see reason — have the students they educate and the colleges that will accept them demand fact-checked textbooks. Public outcry from people outside the system isn’t working, it’s time to try something new.