> Texas, you'll recall, has creationism in science textbooks. Techs affair with Texas will be short lived as i don't think tech people are going to want their kids taught Texas science.

As someone helping a 14 year old with their 8th grade science homework, I can assure you that this isn't the case at least in one city school district.

I think a /lot/ of people don't understand how schools are structured in Texas, which is very different even from the Midwest where I grew up. In Texas, school districts are "ISDs"[0], which means that they make budgetary and curriculum decisions independent of the city they resides in and multiple ISDs can coexist in the same city. In San Antonio metro area, where I reside, there are nineteen (19) different ISDs in the same metro area. There is sometimes cooperation between them, but in general they operate completely independently from one another and from the city itself.

This contrasts with most other states where the state DoEd sets state-wide curriculum, and cities operate school boards (which may or may not be elected positions), which run the school system for the city. In Texas, the state DoEd sets minimum standards which are mostly enforced/set by setting minimum standards for acceptance to state universities. So in Texas, yes, /some/ public schools /may/ teach creationism in their science textbooks. But I do not believe this to be commonplace, and I've yet to observe it happening in any of the materials I've been exposed to in any Texas city. The science textbook used in the district my girlfriend's daughter attends is a newer edition of the same textbook I had in a city in the Midwest, for instance.

Because Texas has this ISD system, it is true that /some/ schools in the state may use materials which teach this, but it's important to note that the state's DoEd, the Texas Education Agency (TEA) has a policy of neutrality on the subject of intelligent design but has multiple times soundly rejected approval of materials which contain anti-evolution rhetoric, including in 2011 which was the last time that these materials were up for review. Given that, while it's possible /some/ schools may be using these types of materials, it would be against the recommendations of the TEA, and these materials would likely not qualify as meeting the necessary science requirements to attend a state university in Texas.

The fact people constantly bring up "creationism is taught in Texas" is to me a coastal "elite" trope that is intended to dig into Texas stereotypes and make fun of people in Texas as backwards hicks, when in fact Texas has been at the forefront of science and technology in the United States for over a century, including today. The AMD Zen (now Zen 3) microarchitecture that just slapped Intel up the side of the head was designed here in Texas [1], SpaceX is at the forefront of reusable rocketry and is doing that work here in Texas, NASA has had and continues to have a huge footprint in Texas, additive metal 3D printing (SLS) was invented in Texas at UT[2] and continues to be advanced there and several companies producing 3D printing systems are based in the area, last year the first woman to ever receive the Abel Prize was Professor Emeritus Karen Uhlenbeck at UT Austin [3].

In every single aspect of science, technology, engineering, and math, there are people in Texas pushing the envelope of human knowledge and achievement, and it is exceedingly disrespectful to them to publicly shit on "Texas science", thank you very much.

[0]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Independent_school_district

[1]: https://www.statesman.com/NEWS/20170407/How-a-team-of-Austin...

[2]: https://www.tctmagazine.com/additive-manufacturing-3d-printi...

[3]: https://cns.utexas.edu/news/mathematics-highest-prize-awarde...