Photo by Karon

Some say it’s never too late to fix a mistake. A handful of Virginia lawmakers and academics disagree.

This week, Virginia’s State Board of Education approved new versions of two elementary school textbooks after factual and grammatical errors were discovered in the texts last December.

But some say that fixing the errors isn’t enough, claiming that books by a writer who is not a trained historian should not be allowed in Virginia classrooms. Politicians and professors told the Washington Post that authors should be experts in the subjects they write about:

“It’s stunning that so much accommodation is given to a publisher that probably shouldn’t exist in the first place,” said Del. David L. Englin (D-Alexandria), sponsor of a new lawintended to keep error-ridden textbooks out of students’ hands.

Increased scrutiny of textbooks caughtdozens of errors in recent drafts of “Our Virginia” and “Our America,” including a reference to the “United States Navel Academy” and a misquote from Thomas Jefferson. The state approved these drafts contingent on Five Ponds addressing its concerns. But historians say the fact that such errors made it into the books casts doubt on the publisher’s credibility.

“I don’t have much confidence in these textbooks,” said Zachary Schrag, a history professor at George Mason University who enumerated his concerns in a four-page memo to the state.