And the problem with this is that TX controls the textbooks for the country
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Beth Cole eac...@amber.emporia.edu
http://www.cnn.com/2004/EDUCATION/08/05/texas.textbooks.reut/index.html Battle over Texas sex-ed textbooks Second-largest buyer could influence rest of U.S.
DALLAS (Reuters) -- The lesson for Texas teens is that the only safe sex is no sex, and that may be a lesson that heads nationwide.
Texas educators are debating what will be taught in new sexual education textbooks for its high school students. The 15-member Texas Board of Education is considering and will likely approve four books, all of which extol the virtues of abstinence. Three make no mention of contraceptives at all while one makes p***ing reference to condoms.
Critics are crying foul, saying that a lesson of abstinence alone is dangerous because it could lead to more teen pregnancies and more teens becoming infected with sexually transmitted diseases.
The battle in Texas has national implications because the state is the second-biggest market for textbooks in the United States. Books approved by the state's school board are typically marketed nationally.
According to Centers for Disease Control figures, Texas has been among the top five states in the country for teenage pregnancies for several years.
When he was governor of Texas, George W. Bush pushed for an abstinence-based sexual education curriculum. He raised his concerns to a national level when he said in this year's State of the Union address: "We will double federal funding for abstinence programs, so schools can teach this fact of life: Abstinence for young people is the only certain way to avoid sexually transmitted diseases." National surveys indicate that a wide majority of parents support a strong abstinence message to teens in sexual education.
The Texas Freedom Network, a group that regularly battles social and religious conservatives in the state, along with Planned Parenthood and others are asking the board not to approve the four textbooks under consideration.
Book tells teens rest prevents STDs They say the books are lacking. For example, one textbook under review advises that a good way a teen-ager can prevent a sexually transmitted disease is to get plenty of rest so he or she can have a clear head about sex and choose abstinence.
"The key thing here is that the textbooks do not contain a trace of information about family planning and prevention of sexually transmitted diseases other than through abstinence," said Dan Quinn, a spokesman for the Texas Freedom Network.
Critics want the board to ask the publishers to revise the books to include more information on contraceptives, but the board is expected to approve the books without changes since officials say discussion of contraceptives in their teachers' supplements is enough to meet state curriculum requirements .
"There are other contraceptive methods in addition to abstinence and you are just not going to find it in these textbooks," Quinn said. He charged the textbook publishers have engaged in self-censorship to appease social conservatives in the state at the expense of the health of Texas teen-agers.
The board will meet in September to discuss the books and will vote on whether to approve them in November. If approved, the texts are likely to appear in cl***rooms in August 2005 -- where they could be the standard text for about 10 years.
Local school districts are not required to use one of the new books but they receive state funding to buy them if they do.
The publishers of the books are Holt, Rinehart and Winston, Glencoe/McGraw Hill and Thomson Delmar Learning.
Some of the books currently in use in the state have more information about contraceptives than the books up for consideration, but once the new books are approved, they will for the most part replace all the current texts.
Board at center of religious and political battles The education board has been at the center of many political and religious battles over the years including a recent proposal by evangelical Christian groups to have the state's textbooks include items debunking evolution.
Despite opposition, the sex education textbooks under consideration are likely to get approval. State Education Agency officials said mention of condoms and contraceptives in the teacher's editions or in supplements to the books enable them to meet Texas curriculum standards.
Texas standards require sexual education books to "analyze the effectiveness of barrier protection and other contraceptive methods, including the prevention of sexually transmitted diseases, keeping in mind the effectiveness of remaining abstinent until marriage." Richard Blake, a spokesman for Holt, Rinehart and Winston said his company offers a supplement for students that goes into comprehensive detail about forms of contraceptives.
The supplement for students is free with the purchase of the textbooks.
It is excluded from the main text in order to offer flexibility and meet the needs of school boards across the United States that have differing views on how to treat a subject many see as highly sensitive.
"Teachers and educators across the country, and not just in Texas, have told us they wanted it this way," Blake said.
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The problems of the world cannot possibly be solved by skeptics or cynics whose horizons are limited by the obvious realities. We need men who can dream of things that never were. --John F. Kennedy our home page: http://www.IsleOfSky.net
kfb ...@aol.comshmom (KFB ESQ)
And the only sure way to avoid lung cancer is to not breath... Unfortunately, like abstaining from sex, it's no "solution" to the problem.
These fundie buffoons are so far into the deep end of their sea of delusion that they can't even identify the real problem. The problem is not sex. The problem is pregnancy. We cannot prevent teen sex, nor should we be trying.
Their bodies are telling them that it's high time to start diddling each other with reckless abandon and there's no reason why they shouldn't...except of course for disease and pregnancy; both of which can be controlled if there is a will to do so.
Kevin
stePH aceth...@earthlink.net
For some reason I saw Dr. Strangelove when I read that: "... it requires only the *vill* to do so." stePH
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"A lion will exert himself to the utmost, even when entering the tiger's den to throw baby rabbits off a cliff!" -- Moroboshi Ataru
kfb ...@aol.comshmom (KFB ESQ)
"Mine Fuhrer, I can walk!" Love that movie.
Kevin
stePH aceth...@earthlink.net
A true cl***ic, and almost certainly Kubrick's best, but strangely the "Special Edition" DVD I rented from NetFlix is not a widescreen version.
stePH
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"A lion will exert himself to the utmost, even when entering the tiger's den to throw baby rabbits off a cliff!" -- Moroboshi Ataru
Jason Steiner ja...@gaydeceiver.com
Kubrick wanted it that way. Actually, Strangelove is odd in that it was shot in 1.33:1, and certain scenes were matted in 1.66:1 (widescreen). Kubrick was a fascist about presentation. He switched to using mono sound for his later movies because he felt that there was too much variation in theater stereo systems to preserve his vision.
A brilliant, crazy man.
jason
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"Listen, my boy, I can't abide children. I know it's the style nowadays to make a terrible fuss over you - but I don't go for it. As far as I'm concerned, they're no good for anything but screaming, torturing people, breaking things, smearing books with jam and tearing the pages." - The Neverending Story
"Noelle" gnoe...@charter.net
Speaking as a Texan, I'm so, so sorry this came out of my state!
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Those who are frightened or intimidated by reading are encouraged to seek entertainment elsewhere.
We recommend a shiny ball of foil.
--R.K. Milholland
Citizen Ted enoid801D...@THIScomcast.net
So, let's look at this Texas logic: If teens get more rest, they'll be more likely to make a decision overriding their most powerful impulses. Additionally, teenagers are likely to make careful, calculated decisions about sex if you deny them concrete information about sex.
The scientific disciplines of biology, genetics, cosmology, anthropology, astronomy and taxonomy are all wrong, and Jeebus made everything by magic.
Is it any wonder our president is a complete ****ing retard?
- TR "I'm afraid of Americans." - David Bowie
J.W.T. Meakin jwnospa...@sbcglobal.net
The message really is "sex only within marriage". And yes, if followed, it would keep "your husband or wife from bringing home HIV or syphillis or whatever".
Bill.
Joann Evans bond...@frontiernet.net
Hmm. One could say the same for driving, but that gets taught in schools. (Espically as one must go out of one's way to get a car. Almost everyone has sex organs. Don't leave home without 'em...) Yeah, conservatives (and others) seem to be of the belief that if we don't discuss something with young people, it'll never occur to them to do it, or involve themselves in it. Again, they all posess the relevant parts....
And BTW, what do they expect these allegedly na??ve students to do after graduation? Suddenly they're in relationships, or even married, and *now* they're suddenly supposed to know about contraception?
It's true, it doesn't leave much for those who *are* going to do it anyway...
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You know what to remove, to reply....
Brigit Bri...@yahoo.com
I wonder if these ***es are really that stupid. There is nothing more titilating than something that is repressed and they must know this. It is the old "Don't think of a pink elephant" If someone says that to you, than that is what you think of. I wonder if these people actually WANT teens to be having sex and WANT to increase the teen pregnancy rate so they can then guilt them out of aborting after not letting them have access to birth control, while making themselves look like they were trying to prevent it. Isn't there all these laws of parental notification?? People love to go after teens girls to force them to birth an accident because teen girls tend to be the most naive and tend to have the least financial resources. If these teens birth all these baybees than Wal-mart and others will have an endless supply of minimum wage workers to pay no bennies to, there will be more stupid voters, more cannon fodder etc. I mean if they can't see that repression increases a problem how do they feed themselves or drive a car to their board meetings. How do they find their mouths with utensils???
Brigit
zpg1 ...@yahoo.com (Mary Ann)
People figured this out almost as soon as the fundie movement burst forth from its vile cocoon. The fundies want more little worshippers to control, and downtrodden women. They don't mind poverty too much either - all the churches love the poor and the ignorant, because they make such good worshippers. So they formed an alliance with the unethical right-wing of Dick Cheney and George W. Bush. They'd supply the votes, and the Republicans would supply the money and political backing. Then later, they'd reap the workers, and the fundie churches would get the worshippers and a heady taste of power their fringe attitudes, lack of innate intelligence and relentless sprogging had previously prevented.
This is all about creating new low-paid, low-intelligence, high-consuming workers. So what if some of them end up on welfare and in prison? The underpaid labor of their brothers and sisters more than make up for the expense, which is borne by the seething and shrinking middle cl*** anyway - not by the Wal-Mart heirs.
It's hard to imagine how anyone who actually believes in conservative principles of self-reliance and responsibility could ever make common cause with those who promote breeding at any cost and who adore welfare in all its myriad forms. And yet they have.
Maybe that's why so many people who used to call themselves conservatives now also call themselves Libertarians.
Mary Ann
deerin ...@mindspring.com
They'll generate a lot of business for Christian therapists and church marriage/relationship counsellors--g!
C.
** (which is actually the real-life case)
Fountain of Filth m...@privacy.net
Very true... but it does work both ways.
I have a relative whose husband was snipped after kid #4. She must have gotten used to the babyproof sex, because she had to have an @bortion when she got knocked up by her paramour. The marriage ended about a year later with a textbook Messy Divorce Where The Kids Are Pawns.
And some of my relatives wonder why I'm CF... lol ~Fountain of Filth
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"The enemy is at the gate. And the enemy is the human mind itself - or lack of it - on this planet." - General Boy
lenona ...@aol.com (Lenona321)
Al Franken said in his book that a study showed that abstinence courses reduce condom use. Not teen sex.
He also asked various well-known conservatives to send in their stories of how they abstained from sex in their teen years so he could make a book collection for teen readers. I don't know if Franken would really have put it together -
even for laughs - but I suspect he wouldn't because almost all the names listed were people over 40. (How old is Ralph Reed, who was probably the youngest one listed?) That, no doubt, is one reason they all (politely) refused to cooperate. If Franken had been even half-serious, you'd think he would have sought out only the famous names of those under 35. What teen wants to hear how Phyllis Schlafly or Newt Gingrich abstained?
And check out Wendy Kaminer's essay on the abstinence group "True Love Waits" in her essay collection of the same title. In it, she says (paraphrased) that it's one thing to tell kids to put school above sex; it's another to tell them to struggle to abstain for years because they will be rewarded with loving spouses at age 20 who will never divorce them. Or, as one woman she quoted might have said, 1950s-style prolonged virginity can drive you into a bad marriage just as sex can, because both can muddle your brain.
Lenona.
J.W.T. Meakin jwnospa...@sbcglobal.net
Which is not what I wrote.
Which is therefore irrelevant.
"if followed", I wrote.
Bill.
skye ...@dakotacom.net (Brenda Nelson)
Actually, the ones pushing this abstinence agenda are, by and large, the same ones who recommend "letting Jebus plan your famblee!" Not only do they not want kids to know about/use contraception *before* they're married, they don't want kids to know about/use contraception *after* they're married.
It's about being the Sex Police.
Brenda Nelson, A.A.#34 skyeyes at dakotacom dot net
stePH aceth...@earthlink.net
And if the Queen had balls, she'd be King.
stePH
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"A lion will exert himself to the utmost, even when entering the tiger's den to throw baby rabbits off a cliff!" -- Moroboshi Ataru
ayrsa ...@hotmail.com (J.D. Spangler)
Yeah, I figured that out early on when I realized that none of these people I've ever seen/read about offer sex education or family planning cl***es for people about to be married or who are already married. Even if you accepted their premise that sex outside of marriage is to be avoided, that would still leave a need for education in the basics of contraception, fertility and hell, even "alternatives"(like oral/manual sex) within the bounds of a marriage.
But you won't find it anywhere.
Like you said, it's all about being the Sex Police. And cranking out new followers.
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Regards, J.D. Spangler http://www.ayrsayle.net/
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