With all of the damage culture warriors on the State Board of Education have done — or tried to do — to the education of Texas public school students in their science and history classrooms, it can be easy to forget what they’ve also done on sex education. Today the online news magazine Slate posted the above video, which examines how two high school health textbooks from the same publisher address sex education — one submitted for adoption in Texas in 2004 and the other a decade earlier. That abstinence-only textbook from 2004, which doesn’t include a shred of information on contraception, remains in classrooms today.
Slate focused this video on the health textbooks from just one publisher, Holt, Rinehart and Winston. But publisher Glencoe/McGraw-Hill’s health textbooks were also abstinence-only. Holt and Glencoe essentially split the Texas health textbook market between them in 2004-05.
The State Board of Education hasn’t set an adoption date for the next generation of health textbooks for Texas public schools. We’re likely about five years away, at least. Meanwhile, Texas has the one of the highest teen birth rates among the nation’s 50 states — the fifth highest, in fact, as of 2013. And the Texas Legislature still refuses to encourage school districts to change pro-ignorance policies on sex ed. In fact, lawmakers won’t even consider legislation that at least bars schools from teaching medically inaccurate information, such as exaggerated failure rates for contraception and other falsehoods promoted by abstinence-only programs that dominate Texas classrooms.
Not only 5th in the nation, but 1st in teen repeat pregnancies. This is an injustice to children.
“Pro-ignorance policies.”
A perfect description!
You can’t get pregnant the first time. And you cannot get the TEAliban (GOP) to give a damn about real human people.
This state is a laughing stock in the nation. We are the most backward state in the nation bordering on on Alabama’s ignorance.
When I leave this idiot state it will be because I’m tired of people not knowing how to act in public.
The Evangelical Dumbfucks on the TSBOE have really left their mark on Texas-they’re truly dead set on raising kids to be even dumber than they are, and doin one hell of a job of it via textbooks that handily air brush out reality whenever they see fit.
These narrow minded and hateful ignoramuses should be jettisoned from their posts, but they’ve managed to infest themselves on the Board, and lotsa luck to Texas on that front!(I’m a native from Tyler, living in Austin.)
Jesus, please protect us from your “good Christian” followers….