Posted by According to Agape Press, the Texas State Board of Education has severed its ties to the National Association of State School Boards because its policies, in their view, “continue to gravitate to liberal left.”
Last week, the Texas State Board of Education voted 10-5 to remove itself from membership in the National Association of State School Boards, or NASBE. The motion was put forth by board member Terri Leo of Spring, Texas. She believes many of NASBE’s policies are out of touch with mainstream America.
For example, says Leo, NASBE holds to the notion that the phrase “separation of church and state” accurately summarizes the Bill of Rights — even though the phrase does not appear in any founding American document and was used by Thomas Jefferson 11 years after the Bill of Rights was passed. Leo says the Texas Board of Education voted not be associated with an organization that chooses to perpetuate a myth.
This no doubt coming from their indoctrination in the work of David Barton, vice chair of the Texas Republican Party and the purveyor of an enormous number of myths about the founding fathers. Barton is a pseudo-historian whose work is so shoddy that he has been slammed even by his fellow Baptists. But that’s not the only reason for the separation:
In addition, Leo says she and her nine Republican colleagues oppose NASBE’s effort to encourage state boards to implement a bullying policy that has a special victim category for homosexuals.
Of course. God forbid that schools should protect kids from bullying. Anyone who’s been around schools for long, as I have, knows that casting aspersions on someone’s sexuality is among the most common forms of bullying, and the word “faggot” is used nearly as often in junior highs and high schools as “hello” and “goodbye”. Only a fool would deny that there are many kids who are harrassed and bullied because they are, or are presumed to be, homosexual. And given that, only the morally vacuous would think that schools should not do what they can to discourage such harrassment.
Citing a third policy area of disagreement, Leo notes that NASBE supports comprehensive sex education — while state law in Texas advocates abstinence-only sex education. On top of that, she says, “the Republicans on this board and the majority of Texans support” that law.
The Republicans on that board and the majority of Texans seem blissfully unaware of the fact that their policies have only worsened the situation. Only 5 states in the nation have a teen pregnancy rate above 10%. Guess what state is among them? Yep. Texas. Teen pregnancy has gone down nationally every year for the last 15 years, but guess which state has had the smallest decline? You guessed it – Texas. And guess which state just ordered health textbooks that contain no mention whatsoever of contraception? Texas again, led by this same school board full of halfwits. Meanwhile, nations with truly comprehensive sex education programs including free contraception have rates of teen pregnancy far lower than ours. Even with 15 years of continuous decline in teen pregnancy, the US still has rates more than double that of any European nation, and a full 7 times higher than the Netherlands.
November 27, 2005