Texas Caught in Time?

The answer, of course, is about money. The beauty of free-market capitalism is that money walks, even if it means that the only ones walking are the ones dragging their knuckles on the ground. Texas, it seems, has tremendous buying power in the textbook world. Due to their high population, their standards drive publishers to pander to their every whim in order to get their business. So, when they dumb down their own textbooks, they also dumb down the textbooks of other districts in the US who don’t have the “purchasing power” (read “money”) to get custom-made texts.

It’s not as bad as it seems. As someone working in the educational publishing industry, I can tell you that both New York City School Districts and Los Angeles School Districts also have a major influence in the textbook market. Still, if Texas pushes standards to (what shall we call it?) the intellectual right, it can affect many other districts that aren’t looking for content that’s geared toward NYC and LA’s urban populations.

The obvious question is, why isn’t there just a Federal Textbook Standard? Wouldn’t that solve everything? Not gonna happen. I can already hear the pundits crying “nanny state” at the top of their lungs. So, my question is: If money talks, then why aren’t the saner states combining purchasing power to make Texas into small potatoes? Hey, New England! Combine your individual district and state standards into one New England Textbook Standard that makes you all able to purchase as a unit! It seems such a simple solution, I wonder why no one does it? And while you’re at it, combine your standard with NY State, NYC, and Pennsylvania standards to create the Northeast Textbook Standard!! Get North Carolina and Maryland and Virginia to adopt the same standard and turn it into the Atlantic Seaboard Textbook Standard!! And as soon as everyone agrees on the history, the science, and the health curriculum, maybe THEN we can have a Federal Standard.

Of course, it’s not this easy. Politics will get in the way, and everyone will want to do it their own way. “We want to educate our children the way we want! Freedom to learn our own version of the truth!” But people wanted to know what could be done….there you have it. Or maybe nobody really wants a solution.  I have to admit, it is fun to just rip on Texas.