"If you have sex, you will get X and die!"

[omorka]

All those who read this who are in Texas:

The Texas State Board of Education (henceforth SBOE) is in the process of adopting new health textbooks. Due to political pressures from the abstinence-only and anti-birth-control crowds, several of the textbooks under consideration have no information on birth control and/or condom use, or mention these only in terms of their failure rates. In addition to being bad policy in a state that has the nation's highest teen birth rate, this is technically a violation of the Health TEKS, which are abstinence-focused but do require at least discussing "barrier protection and other contraceptive methods." Hmm . . . maybe we should consider adding a Health section to the TAKS?

Please help by contacting the SBOE (the nice people at ProtectOurKids.com have a link to find your SBOE representative) and letting them know that Texans support comprehensive sex ed! It doesn't matter whether you have kids in the education system or not - you pay taxes here, you're entitled to your say. In fact, those of you who are former Texans and do have kids might want to write, too - "I'm not coming back if my kid isn't going to be educated," etc.

Thanks. This means a lot to me.

Comments

[cifarelli]

The publishers of those textbooks say they have included the relevant information required by the Health TEKS in separate "supplements" so that individual districts or schools can decide whether or not to teach the information.

I think this is a huge cop-out and the information ought to be IN the books, and I'm still inclined to protest this. Especially since what Texas does has such a big influence on other states -- the textbook publishers market the Texas-approved books to the smaller states, who, I guess, don't have enough clout to get the publishers to cater directly to them. But you're an educator, so you probably already knew that :)

I'm pretty much resigned to the fact that if I have children, I am going to have to teach them myself if I want them to have reliable and relevant information about sex. Makes me really worry about the children of conservative parents who don't want their children to know anything, and the children of parents who for whatever reason don't have time or don't care enough to teach their children. I love Texas, but I'm constantly surprised to find out how conservative this state really is. Probably because I grew up in Austin, a liberal town, and attended the "Liberal Arts Academy" magnet program for high school. Living in Houston is like being splashed in the face with cold water, over and over again.

[omorka.livejournal.com]

What irks me is that, strictly speaking, a school cannot choose not to teach a TEKS objective. Certainly they can't in any of the regular subject areas; if I tried to omit, say, the parametrics objective in a Precalculus course, I would be in violation of my contract.Why would anyone suggest that it should be okay for a health teacher to omit an objective in their TEKS? Or is it becoming true that only the TEKS that are tested will be taught? Surely real life is the ultimate test for this one?

The market-share issue with the textbooks is also a problem, although on this issue we do have the California market to balance us out. The benefit here is that if the three large markets (Texas, California, and New York) all go with textbooks that do include contraception and prophylaxis, then there's almost no incentive for the textbook publishers to produce texts that omit the information. Mississippi and Alabama just aren't large enough markets on their own.

Having come from Mississippi, the conservatism of Texans does not surprise me in the least. I'm actually more surprised by the occasional bastions of liberalism. But my rock-bottom concern here is that pregnancies cause dropouts (along with other major life damage) in high school students. As a self-appointed guardian of these kids, I refuse to let that happen without a fight.