Key moment from last night’s Colbert Report interview with Don “Somebody’s gotta stand up to experts” McLeroy? That probably came when host Stephen Colbert asked the former Texas State Board of Education chairman who decides what information gets into textbooks:
Colbert: “I imagined that experts wrote textbooks, but in fact it gets voted on at a school board as to what is true?”
McLeroy explained that the state board sets the standards for what should be in the textbooks, leading Colbert to wonder aloud what happens to textbooks that don’t meet the board’s standards:
McLeroy: “If they don’t, they will not get adopted.”
Colbert: “I have always been a fan of reality by majority vote.”
Of course, Colbert’s deadpan response neatly sums up how the State Board of Education decides what millions of Texas students learn in their public school classrooms: “facts” are determined by a majority vote of politicians, not research, scholarship or — clutch the pearls — experts who actually know what they’re talking about. The full clip (above) is online here.
