Way back when I was a kid living in Texas, I landed a spot in the best science classroom in the school. 6th grade, and the teacher had use using Bunsen Burners in the second semester. The entire room was full of terrariums with different kinds of animals, which you could pull out and handle in between classes. The teacher had over a decade of experience and rave reviews from practically every parent whose kid took the class.

The year before I got into the class, one of the kids who took the class ended up failing it. I knew the guy. He was a chronic slacker. But his father was a wealthy lawyer and didn't like having a C+ Augustus for a son. So, traditionally, they'd lean on each teacher in turn until better grades fell out of the system.

When this particular guy didn't budge, the parent took an alternate route. It was something of an open secret that the teacher was gay. It was the 90s, and anti-gay paranoia was rampant. So the kid alleged that he failed the class because the teacher came on to him and he didn't reciprocate.

It took a minute for the whole saga to play out, but inside the subsequent semester my science teacher was shit-canned. His replacement was a fresh-from-college barely-accredited woman who spent more time talking about her boyfriend's art projects than anything to do with science class. It goes without saying that all the terrariums were removed. We did not do anything with Bunsen Burners in that second semester. And most of the classes involved watching old films about dinosaurs. Practically everyone aced the class, because the tests were trivially easy - even by 6th grader standards - and no parent really seemed to care that we failed to benefit from participating in this educational farce.

Fuck Texas. Fuck the TFA. And fuck our fixation on testing ahead of actually learning anything.