There's always been kind of a circus atmosphere around the deliberations of the Texas State Board of Education on textbook content. In the not-so-recent past there have been fights over including Creationist ideas into science textbooks and watering down the teaching of evolution. The inclusion of David Barton's dubious founding-father quotes and equally-dubious view of American history have also been the subject of Texas debates. Because Texas is the 2nd largest purchaser of books in the country and the largest
unifiedbook purchaser (California is the largest purchaser but doesn't buy the same texts
en bloc for all it's districts), it exercises enormous influence on what textbook publishers print. Thus, the whole nation has an interest in what Texas does.
And now the neoconservative majority on the State Board of Education has succeeded in imprinting its own revisionist view of American history
Stephen Colbert takes on the Texas Board of 'Edjukashun'