His mother, Roni Dean-Burren, lambasted the publishing giant on social media, giving what media outlets have aptly referred to as “a lesson on accuracy.” David Levin, president and chief executive of McGraw-Hill Education, acknowledged that something had clearly gone wrong and admitted that the company “must and will do better.” Yet, he insisted that the error was an editorial oversight and not a problem with Texas state curriculum standards. 

What standards was Levin referring to? In 2010, a conservative bloc successfully pushed through changes in order to “restore balance” after what they called years of “liberal bias” in history education. As part of this shift, themes central to African American history were either diluted or altogether removed from the state’s curriculum. In the interest of downplaying the history of slavery, the board referred to the African slave trade as the “Atlantic Triangular Trade.” The Jim Crow Laws and the onslaught of the KKK were simply erased from the state’s curriculum. Such omissions meant that it would be impossible to publish historically accurate textbooks that were free of political bias that also complied with the Texas Board of Education’s agenda.

While the question remains as to whether anyone raised concerns about the particular caption that Coby Burren spotted that day, many did raise concerns about the new textbooks themselves. In 2014, a group of ten scholars had already begun sounding the alarm. This group, which had been hired by the non-partisan Texas Freedom Network, criticized the historical inaccuracies and political biases of the textbooks that were up for consideration by the Texas State Board of Education. In his interview with NPR, historian Edward Countryman urged that the books should include more about slavery and race throughout U.S. history and likened the recently adopted texts to “teaching physics and stopping at Newton without bringing in Einstein.”

Scholars aside, the parties involved maintain that this error was the result of editorial oversight. According to Thomas Ratliff, vice chair of the Texas Board of Education, “Everybody admits it shouldn’t have happened, so let’s figure out how to prevent it in the future.” The spokesperson for McGraw Hill-Education, Brian Belardi, openly acknowledged that the Texas books would not be used for the company’s clients in other states. Given the recent 2010 conservative overhaul of the state’s history curriculum, coupled with the fact the company produced a unique set of books unique for the state of Texas, leads one to wonder if this was the very agenda the conservative board was intending to carry out in the first place.