Ain't Nothing Wrong With A Texas Mathbook

Teachers in a California school district are up in arms over the fact that publisher McGraw-Hill mistakenly sent unedited copies of math textbooks riddled with errors. In addition to typos and problems with the answer-keys, the books, approved for California academic standards, came with covers for the company’s Texas books.

(The Texas books feature cowboy armadillos sitting around a campfire; we haven’t seen the California covers, but we understand they feature Ponch from CHIPS).

Hair Balls was glad to see that such books adhere to individual states’ requirements, and we have therefore offered some Houston-themed questions for McGraw-Hill’s consideration:

1) Two Houston police officers are suspended while the department investigates allegations that they severely beat the father of a professional football player. The suspension follows on the heels of two officers who were disciplined for not following departmental policy when they shot and killed a man after a high-speed chase. How many weeks before every police officer in the department is on desk-duty?

2) TDCJ general population inmate #20447, a a former meth dealer, has a Bluetooth-ready LG Chocolate cell with a T-Mobile Flexpay plan. Death row inmate #01953, aka “The Toothpick Killer,” has a Samsung Glyde with a Nationwide Select Plan from Verizon. Who will be gang-raped first?

3) One Morton Ranch cheerleader can strip and blindfold two junior varsity cheerleaders in four minutes. If seven cheerleaders have one full hour and a swimming pool, how freaking hot is that?

4) Assume HISD spends $350,000 more on Ignite!, a computer program founded by Neil Bush that condenses major historical events into two-minute jingles, thus giving Houston children an edge over inferior “book-learnin'” kids in other districts. Assuming each Ignite! CD is 60 minutes long, how many Asian call girls can Neil Bush get with $350K?

Update: Mary Skafidis, a spokeswoman for McGraw-Hill, has this explanation:

We have a long track record of creating high-quality instructional materials and continually work to strengthen our process for creating programs that drive student achievement.

This is a rare occurrence due primarily to a first run printing. First printings of materials are used as samples only.

We are working closely with the district to replace the materials.

— Craig Malisow