PRESS RELEASE
For immediate release: June 26, 2004TEXAS CITIZENS FOR SCIENCE
Texas Will Adopt Inadequate Health Education Textbooks in 2004
The Health Education books reviewed by TCS teach abstinence-only sex education and exclude many other important topics
Contact: Steven Schafersman, President, Texas Citizens for Science, Odessa, TX
Phone: 432-352-2265
Email: info@txscience.org
Web: http://www.texscience.org/This year's textbook adoption cycle includes Health Education books, and these will be the controversial textbooks this summer. Please examine the website TCS has constructed about this topic at http://www.texscience.org/health.php. Briefly, previously adopted health education books--the ones in use now--are completely inadequate in discussing topics important to teenagers. The textbooks deliberately omit information about contraception, birth control, family planning, abortion, sexual intimacy, different sexualities, etc. Instead, the books all devote an inordinate amount of attention to sexual abstinence, the Texas method of choice to deal with adolescent sexuality. The result has been a generation of Texas teenagers effectively kept ignorant of the most important information they need to deal with the sexual situations and problems they face almost daily. The further result of such willful ignorance is the fact that Texas ranks 5th in teenage pregnancies and 2nd in teenage births (Mississippi is first); because there are so many obstacles to obtaining abortions in Texas, the state only ranks 26th in teenage abortions. The prevalence of STDs among Texas teenagers is also among the highest in the nation.
Believing that students this age will remain abstinent--because that is all that is taught to them in Texas health education classes--is more than unrealistic, it is absurd and dangerous. Over 60% of Texas school students will engage in sexual activity before they turn 18. Keeping students ignorant of honest, reliable, and scientific knowledge about extremely important topics of interest--and forcing them to learn about these topics from their friends, the Internet, or by trial and error (assuming that parents also ignore these topics)--is unbelievably counter-productive and unethical. This is an example of anti-education or miseducation, a crime that should be condemned, not a practice that should be accepted, much less endorsed, by public officials charged with ensuring the quality of health education in Texas.
One of the worst aspects of the Texas textbook adoption process is that the Texas Education Agency's textbook review panel and the members of the State Board of Education don't have to censor these health books themselves. All the new 2005 health education textbooks submitted for adoption in Texas were self-censored by the authors and publishers to appeal to the Texas market! Although students are desperate for reliable information about teenage sexuality, birth control, contraception, prophylaxis, and the prevention of sexually transmitted diseases by young adults who choose to engage in sexual activity, all of the books omit these vital topics, thus continuing the propagation of ignorance among young adults in Texas. Instead, all the books emphasize abstinence-only sex education. This deliberate propagation of ignorance practiced by our state's education officials is the direct cause of Texas's high rate of teenage pregnancy and STD infection. This is a scandal.
The TCS written testimony is available online as an HTML file, a PDF file, and a Word document at http://www.texscience.org/health.php. This testimony has been submitted to the State Board of Education for the textbook hearing in Austin on Wednesday, July 14. The testimony reviews and analyzes the treatment of sex education in five different health education textbooks. In brief, the five 2005 health textbooks submitted for adoption this year treat teenage sexuality no differently than the book described below: all promote sexual abstinence-only and avoid mentioning any other methods of prophylaxis for prevention of STDs and contraception for prevention of pregnancy. Four are "Texas Editions," and you know what that means: keeping the students ignorant. Over 60% of Texas students engage in sexual activity before graduating from high school, so the textbooks, the state health education curriculum, and the state's public education officials are all complicit in the extremely high teenage pregnancy and STD rates in Texas.
It is highly likely that some current members of the Texas State Board of Education will attempt to adopt similar health education textbooks in 2004 and thus perpetuate the ignorance, secrecy, and implied shame of human sexuality. For example, at the recent Texas Republican Party convention, Radical Religious Right SBOE member Terri Leo of Spring, Texas, stated that she would oppose any book submitted that didn't teach abstinence-only. Such an attitude leads directly to the well-known effects of such cruel and misguided education in Texas: high illegitimate teenage pregnancy rate, high rate of sexually-transmitted diseases, high teenage abortion rate, high divorce rate, and similar unfavorable statistics. These undesirable statistics are completely avoidable, because other Western and industrialized countries (e.g., European countries, Japan) have such rates at about 10% of those in Texas, since they provide their adolescent students reliable, scientific, and honest instruction about human sexuality.
Texas is well-known for its pervasive use of abstinence-only sex education programs, which have been proven to be counterproductive in preventing the very undesirable social behaviors and effects that the programs and their supporters wish to end. Until the Texas SBOE begins to treat human sexuality in an honest and scientifically-realistic manner within the health education curriculum, Texas will continue to have some of the worst sexuality and health statistics in the nation.
About 12 years ago, the Texas Department of Health publicly asked that health education textbooks include information about contraception and prophylaxis due to the extremely high rates of unwanted pregnancy and STDs among Texas teenagers. The Department of Health needs to get involved again in 2004 to help stop the foolish business-as-usual (textbook censorship) at the TEA and SBOE and among health education textbook authors and publishers (self-censorship). Our state's tragically high pregnancy and STD rates must be lowered!