Teaching Texas Government in 2025

Needed to say something to my students to tie the material together. Voila:

Let's be honest: Texas Government is a weird class. It has that heavy feeling of a requirement. Kinda like the one you get, if you're older, while in line at the DMV. Or if you're sitting on the bench outside the principal's office. There's a signature you need, something you're going to be told, and leaving is a relief.

I myself didn't know what was expected when I first started teaching it. I looked at the textbook briefly: lots on Texas history, an overview of the various constitutions, considerable detail about the branches of government. Not bad, but not exactly riveting. I asked myself these questions: "What do I need to know? What about Texas government is a fact that must stop me?" That didn't work either. It turns out you must be awfully familiar with a subject to be able to identify the stakes.

However, I had just moved. I lived in Dallas for decades but West Texas is another planet by comparison. And so I read the news, asked about recent history. Tried to figure out why the water quality was horrible, what people did with the money from oil, why football was existential here.

That led to the first big discovery, which was West Odessa. We went, as college staff and faculty, to visit an elementary school out there. I wondered about the lack of sidewalks, the piles of tires, the unique lots. Dusty mansions right next to ramshackles. I didn't realize the entire area was unincorporated: this I only learned reading the news. There's no local government; many have to get a private company to drill to the aquifer to get water. There is desperate need of a hospital. Last I checked, responses to 911 calls can take up to an hour. The article I still assign in my classes, "A Texas politician wants to provide emergency services to constituents who don’t have them. Will they let him?", serves as an introduction to the issue. There have been many developments over the last few years, but dealing adequately with life or death situations is still a major concern.

I should say that teaching at a certain level changes what scholarship means. I am by no means a perfect teacher, but I have been repeatedly recognized for taking extra effort. You don't just bring the scholarly debate to the students. That's good, of course. Everyone should pore over the books and articles, thinking about what words mean. But what you really want is immersion in the problem. Not simply "you can choose to explore this," but recognition of an enormity. That we have to find various ways through and around it, because our minds are continually struggling to grasp everything at stake. And so scholarship is more than papers or talks: it must spill over into blogs and wikis and podcasts and interviews and letters to the editor and essays. It depends on rigorous journalism and documentation; it demands the emotional range and experimentation of the arts. People write papers about what, say, fascism is and that's well and good, but that isn't just years behind the times. It always risks depreciating what's immediate and narrowing what we mean by understanding.

I know when I started thinking what West Odessa represented on a larger level that I saw more about what government in America meant. It isn't just, as the article contends, about a libertarian dream of few regulations and taxes. It's about an attitude we unfortunately witness daily in American life. Why can't I succeed if I work hard or invest smartly? Why is any kind of social skill necessary? And it turns out, as Jelani Cobb and Chris Hayes discussed, that the basic social unit in American life is the neighbor. That the "pursuit of happiness" has to be tempered with "love thy neighbor," and this isn't limited to those of the Abrahamic religions. If you can't conceive of or care for your neighbor properly, you immediately put your own life at risk. If you pretend that hard work in a free market alone will save you, you may dominate for a time, but you will more than likely reap nothing. Look at how much money billionaires burn just to be seen; it's like they have exiled themselves otherwise.

Teaching Texas Government has also brought another reality to the forefront. Regardless of what one thinks of the current President, there can be no doubt many people believe that his success in business has been earned. That he took the risks, did the work, and rightfully champions an empire. In general, we believe that where there is success, there must be organization. Those who achieve must be rational, they must know what they're doing. Surely they cannot be winning the lottery over and over again.

In a similar manner, consider the state of Texas. There are schools with holes in the roof; when it rains, it floods the building. The grid is holding, but it wasn't so long ago that the power supply was frozen and hundreds died. The state leads the nation in hunger. So you might be tempted to believe Texas needs more money to solve its problems. It turns out, though, that if Texas were an independent country, it would be the 8th largest economy on the planet. It has an economy larger than Russia or South Korea; routinely, the state government runs a surplus and has billions in excess revenue.

As an academic, I tend to believe that if something is successful, it must be worthy of study. There must be something done right, no? And then there's Texas, with all the money a state could ever want, and it is not in great shape. The legislature in charge of this money only meets every two years. A lack of oversight often results in problems getting worse. It is dominated by elites: famously, members of the legislature owned payday loan businesses they were tasked with regulating. Laws which may be well-intended require a careful consideration of consequences, and the legislature is not always up to the task. Sepsis rates for those who are pregnant soared earlier in the year.

The problems with government in Texas go far back. You could start earlier, but consider the Constitution of 1876, a document that more or less was a Southern response to the result of the Civil War. An extremely weak government was established. The governor would lead the executive branch, but it featured a number of officials he didn't appoint. They had to be elected separately. The legislature was not meant to meet often; the judiciary was to be elected. Weak government is weak when the state doesn't have much. But what happens when it rivals Saudi Arabia in oil production? All of a sudden, informal power matters more than formal. The fact people want to do business with you makes you powerful, no matter what your role in government is.

I hope a picture is becoming clearer. The weirdness of Texas Government emerges from a specific place. We have these deep assumptions about what constitutes success and achievement. The culture of the state embeds them: it throws billions for the sake of winning at football. But when you start studying anything in the state, when you take a serious look at any problem, you find the failures are hidden by what we want to believe about success. About happiness, too. Not only must those who achieve be rational and hard-working, but those who are happy don't need much and don't need to say much. Your identity as a strong, silent type who speaks through their virtue doesn't require an education. Which is very funny inasmuch as the state of Texas requires this class in a way no other state does.

And I think that's where I want to leave these considerations. Texas Government can be a more coherent class if you're willing to ask 1) what you assume, and why that might be open to challenge 2) what you believe your identity is, and how it relates to the state. When the class is centered on the features of government and policy as if these are neutral, easily accessible considerations, it is not speaking to anyone. Those who very much need the protection of the 8th amendment, for example, can rarely get it. What needs to happen is that you must ask a question–What does it mean to be Texan?–and if you find yourself thinking that's meaningless, ask yourself in what ways you've been shaped by the values all around you. The goal of Texas Government–really, I mean Texas government–should be a free and educated citizenry. You cannot possibly be free or educated if you cannot account for where your values come from.