Messin' with Texas

I am falling behind on these entries and am missing great opportunities to share fresh experiences with you. Although this is one of the most shocking experiences I have had, I am not going to put in the research that should go with this entry. Should any of you read this and want to fact check some things, please do and please post your findings in the comments section.

I recently started taking yoga classes twice a week (they are great and everyone should try it). At one of these classes I met a teacher only a few years older than me. I may not have made it clear thus far, but I have a keen interest in education and learning. I have been especially been eager to learn about the education system here, and hopefully through that knowledge gain a greater understanding of my host culture. I believe education can shape a group of people more than any other influence. So naturally I picked her brain.

She teaches seventh grade somewhere in southeast Texas (she wouldn’t tell me when I told her I would be putting her thoughts in a public forum). She stated several times that she loves teaching, but shared with me the difficulties of teaching at her school. The rest of the opinions, and statements in this entry are that of the teacher, and not my own. They are paraphrased.

While not all schools in the area are like hers, the school system in Texas has generally been unsuccessful. Texas schools’ attempt to raise the bar and improve education has resulted in lowering the bar so that more people can pass. It has dragged down the good students, and does little to help the students that need help the most. The “no child left behind act” has proven useless and has made schools worse rather than better. Students have little or no sense of responsibility, and motivation is at an all time low.

The shocking part of it all, is the amount of sexual activity happening at young ages. Sex-ed is completely inadequate in their school. It is little more than ‘practice abstinence, or you will get horrible STDs.’ I wish I still had the article, but I read an article (I think it was on CNN.com or nytimes.com) citing that students who had taken abstinence pledges were actually more likely to have sex before graduating high school than students who had not. The article called on the Obama administration to turn around years of a policy that has failed our youth year after year by failing to provide them with the knowledge and tools they really need.

Lastly here are three specific stories that this teacher told me. Keep in mind that when I started seventh grade I, and most other students were 12 years old. Not even teenagers yet.

1. Several of the students in the seventh grade are on birth control and are sexual active.
2. One eighth grade girl was caught with a 20 years old boy in the woods near the school. Some clothes has been remove, but they were caught mid… some sort of act.
3. At pep-rallies it is traditional to do what’s called a dark out where the lights I turned off and the cheer leaders put on a show with lots of glow sticks. An eighth grader was caught giving another eighth grader oral sex.

When I hear these stories, I think of my cousins of this age and frankly it makes the reality of this kind of thing much scary.