Whatever happened to the "3 Rs"?
One of the big news items around here is the decision by the Texas State Board of Education to withhold approval of some textbooks for middle and high school health classes unless the publishers of those books explicitly define marriage as being between a man and a woman. The previous phrasing was along the lines of "individuals who marry" instead of "husbands and wives."
While I happen to support the change, the more relevant issue is the one raised by my wife as we walked the dogs yesterday afternoon. "Why in the world," she asked, "are we depending on the public schools to teach kids about marriage to begin with? I don't remember ever having anything like that in a class when I was that age."
Nor do I, and I don't know the answer, except that perhaps our society has degenerated to the point where many kids no longer ever see even a single example of a real-life healthy marriage. It's a sad state of affairs when valuable classroom time is spent on things like this. It's even sadder to think that there might actually be a need for it.
Jack, I didn't read other reports on this story, but since it was an AP feed, I'm sure most of the other media just printed it as is. And while I once was naive enough to think of AP as unbiased and objective, I now know that's not the case. Let the reader beware...
Posted by: Eric at November 9, 2004 07:41 AMAbout the publisher
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I agree with on you this one. Of course, the media spin on practically every Texas textbook issue makes me groan...
I thought it was interesting that the article labeled the "republican board member" that was for the change, but "board member" Mary Helen Berlanga wasn't labeled (she's a democrat). I can't figure out if they just wanted to point out the un-enlightened republican... or they didn't want to upset the "values" readers by stating the opposistion came from a democrat.
I thought both points had merit, it's just interesting to see (in my view) the subtle bias in the report.
Posted by: Jack Grey at November 9, 2004 06:50 AM