Archive for May 20, 2010
The Girl Scout Sex Guide
I was a Girl Scout from Daisies to Seniors – for 13 years. I earned my the Girl Scout Gold Award, the highest honor in the organization, and I am now a lifetime member. My mother was my troop leader for those 13 years and dad helped with events and camping trips, both lifetime members. Yet upon reading this article I am enraged that the leftist, feminazi agenda has overthrown what was, and on some local levels still is, a wholesome worth while group dedicated to challenging girls and encouraging them to think for themselves!
By Austin Ruse
Sharon Slater, a mother of seven, innocently walked into a panel sponsored by the Girl Scouts USA at the United Nations Commission on the Status of Women a few weeks ago. Almost immediately she was asked to leave. All non-Scout adults were kicked out of the room, which was packed with adolescent girls.
Her curiosity piqued, Slater lingered by the door and when the panel ended she went immediately back inside to look around. What she found has shocked her and shocked Girl Scout moms around the country. Slater found a stack of brochures produced by Planned Parenthood called “Healthy, Happy and Hot” that among other things explained to the girls, “Some people have sex when they have been drinking or using drugs. That is your choice.”
But it gets worse. The sex guide explains, “Many people think sex is just about vaginal or anal intercourse. But there are lots of different ways to have sex and lots of different types of sex. Sex can include kissing, touching, licking, tickling, sucking and cuddling. Some people like to have aggressive sex, while others like to have soft sex and slow sex with their partners. There is no right or wrong way to have sex. Just have fun, explore and be yourself!” It tells girls to explore the prostate. Remember, this was distributed in a panel for adolescent girls.
Besides advice about the prostate, the brochure, subtitled “Rights, Sexuality and Living with HIV,” also gives incorrect and even dangerous information about rights and responsibilities. It tells the kids that, “sexual and reproductive rights are recognized around the world.” Sexual rights are hardly recognized around the world. They are not even recognized here in the sexual paradise of the United States. The brochure tells the kids that their rights are violated when governments require them to tell their HIV status to their sex partners.
The Girl Scouts USA have offered various statements to outraged Scout leaders. First they denied they ever passed out the brochure. Then they denied the brochure was ever in the room and that Slater must have fished it out of the trash. Then they said a previous group might have left the brochure. Other users of that conference room on that day were the NAACP for a panel on climate change, the UN for an orientation meeting, and a Dutch poverty group for a panel on counter-terrorism. It is unlikely, to say the least, that the panels on climate change and counterterrorism would distribute Planned Parenthood sex guides for adolescents.
At the same UN meeting, which ended last Friday, the World Association of Girl Scouts and Girl Guides produced a document saying young women “demand their sexual and reproductive rights including access to comprehensive sexuality education, and sexual and reproductive services including contraception and emergency contraception, in order to avoid unintended pregnancies” and also called for access to “safe abortion.”
While they have denied it was in their meeting, what the Girl Scout leadership has not done is distance themselves from the message of the brochure and from Planned Parenthood. But they would have a hard time doing that because they have a long time relationship with Planned Parenthood and have passed out brochures like this before.
At a Girl Scout conference in 2004, co-sponsored by Planned Parenthood, the Girl Scouts handed out a brochure to 700 grade-school girls with the title “It’s Perfectly Normal,” a guide that celebrated masturbation and that featured explicit drawings of couples having sex and a boy putting on a condom. It also listed, no surprise here, the top ten reasons for having an abortion.
The present day Girl Scouts are not your older sister’s Scouts, let alone your Moms. Not by a long shot. They seem to have joined up fully with the anything-goes-ethos of the left-wing sexual buccaneers and for it they are lauded at the UN. Compare that with the Boy Scouts who have remained true to their founding vision and to traditional values and for it they are banned from using public buildings.
Will this be the issue that gets the Girl Scouts back on track? Unlikely. Girl Scout leadership is very dug in on this. But, there is revolt brewing in Girl Scout Land. A group of Mothers in St. Louis intend to ask the St. Louis region to break with the national organization. There likely will be more.
Girl Scout cookies remain awfully tasty, but it seems the moral price to purchase them is getting higher and higher.
Austin Ruse is the President of the New York and Washington, D.C.-based Catholic Family & Human Rights Institute (C-FAM), a research institute that focuses exclusively on international social policy.
Texas School Spending Tops $11k Per Student
Texas School Spending Tops $11k Per Pupil
As we close out this school year, taxpayers may wonder want kind of bang we’re getting for our educational buck. Texans now spend more than $11,000 per year on public education – with less than half going toward instructional expenses.
In the 2008-2009 school year — the last for which data is available — Texas schools spent $11,084 per kid. Ten years ago, Texas spent was spending just $5,857.
If per-pupil spending had risen with inflation, the cost after 10 years would have approximately been $7,545. So where is the money going? Well, it’s not going to the classroom.
If you think of each kid the way school bureaucrats do — as bags of money — and consider your average third-grade class capped at 22 students per teacher, that’s $243,848 sitting there.
But the money isn’t going to the teacher. Average teacher pay was $47,313 in the 08-09 school year (up from $34,357 a decade ago).
So where’s the other $200,000 derived from our average classroom going? Seems a bit much for overhead, doesn’t it?
Of the $11,084 spent per pupil on public education in 2009, only $4,831 went for anything that could even remotely be considered “instructional” expenses as defined by the Texas Education Agency.
Over the last decade, student enrollment has risen 15 percent — from 3.9 million students to 4.6 million students. In that same period, the number of teachers grew accordingly, at 19.3 percent. We now have 14.4 students for every teacher (in 1999 it was 15.2 students per teacher).
But non-teachers? That’s where the growth is. We had 22 percent more in 2009 than in 1999.
So for all this spending, and for all these new, non-classroom employees, surely there’s been some marked improvement in academic performance. Right? I mean, that’s why we spend money in public education…
Actually, there’s been a decline in results. The average Texas SAT score in 1999 was a 992. Over 10 years it has fallen to 988. The SAT may not be a perfect barometer, but it’s a pretty consistent outside measurement. Given what we’re paying per kid, surely it’s reasonable to expect a little improvement, right?
Our public schools are spending dollars almost faster than the taxpayers can earn them. We’re told to support public education spending for the sake of the children. But not too much actually seems to make it to where the kids are.
As parents and taxpayers, we have to demand that more dollars flow to the classroom, not from our pockets but from the over-fed bureaucracy whose bloated weight is dragging down our teachers and academically endangering our kids.
So when your superintendent or school board next asks you for more money, bigger budgets and growing staff, we should demand they show us precisely how it will directly improve the education Texas’ kids receive. Right now, we’re clearly not getting our money’s worth.
Unearthed: Bill White`s “Original” Cap and Trade Memo!
From the Republican Party of Texas headlines. . . . . .
During Wednesday night’s event with Mitt Romney in Houston, Gov Rick Perry mentioned a Bill White memo that has been making the rounds this week. In that 2008 memo, Bill White explained how the incoming Obama administration could sell cap and trade, a policy that would hurt Texas and our energy industry tremendously. The memo also seems to be Mr. White’s audition for a job in the Obama administration, which is funny, because he has spent the past several months trying to put some daylight between himself and both cap and trade and the Obama administration itself. The cap and trade memo’s existence suggests that when Obama’s star was on the rise, Bill White sought to hitch himself to it.
Well, during our research into this memo and what it might mean, we stumbled onto a golden nugget: We found what appears to be the “Original” memo containing Bill White’s true thoughts on cap and trade. As you’ll see, it’s quite revealing. Here’s a screen shot of the opening paragraph.
Texas Social Studies Curriculum Standards
The Lone Star Report — Blog (emphasis provided by a third party)
Reps, activists make cases for, against state Social Studies curriculum standards
Written by: Andy Hogue
5/19/2010 4:39 PM
There were two major press events held at the William B. Travis Building Wednesday as the State Board of Education heard final testimony on proposed changes to the state’s Social Studies curriculum standards.
The standards, which affect what a large portion of publishers include in classroom textbooks across the nation, has made the Texas SBOE proceedings a national spectactle, according to Rep. Sylvester Turner (D-Houston) at a presser held by the Texas Freedom Network, a pro-secularism organization.
“Come January, do not expect the Legislature to purchase these books for our children,” Turner said, noting that the Legislature must approve of purchasing textbooks for school districts.
Turner was joined by Reps. Trey Martinez Fischer (D-San Antonio), Helen Giddings (D-De Soto), Donna Dukes (D-Austin), Elliott Naishtat (D-Austin) and Alma Allen (D-Houston). Speakers at the conference were concerned that civil rights pioneers were not being given enough limelight, as well as the (mistaken) idea that Thomas Jefferson was removed from the curriculum standards entirely. Others expressed concern that the Judeo-Christian religion was being given preference in highlighting America’s founding influences.
Rep. Martinez Fischer decried the process used to approve the textbooks (i.e. elected officials having power to amend TEA writing committee drafts for final approval) and called for a reform that would allow the Legislature to approve of the curriculum standards.
The State Board of Education’s decisions “makes us look like idiots,” said Gary Bledsoe of the Texas Chapter of the NAACP.
He quoted a phrase from a wall of the Main Building at the University of Texas “Ye shall know the truth and the truth shall set you free.” He didn’t note that this is from John 8:32 in the Bible (several protestors oppose the expression of religious sentiment on public buildings — particulary Texas Freedom Network) but said the quote should serve as a rallying cry for protestors.
Many in the crowd of about a hundred held signs which read “Just Educate.” Some were members of a group called the Save our History Coalition, of which the ethnic separatist organization MEChA is a part.
At the other hearing, the Liberty Institute (formerly the Free Market Foundation) hosted several speakers of a more conservative persuasion, including Reps. Dan Flynn (R-Van) and Wayne Christian (R-Center). They spoke in favor of many of the SBOE’s decisions and urged passage this week of the Social Studies standards.
“Liberal fringe efforts to complicate, obfuscate and denigrate our heritage and history must be rejected,” said Jonathan Saenz, attorney and director of legislative affairs for the Liberty Institute. “… A vote delayed is a vote denied.”
Kelly Shackleford, president and chief counsel for the group, said a last-minute amendment to the standards proposed this week to have students compare the concept of “separation of church and state” with the Constitution and other founding documents (where the phrase does not exist) is “an excellent idea.”
“It takes a true liberal extremist to oppose a student reading the Constitution,” Shackleford said.
Dr. Daniel Bonevac, a philosophy professor at the University of Texas, said the pedagogy (meaning strategies of instruction) is sound in the SBOE-recommended changes. “They are more precise, and have improved depth and historical accuracy. The board should reject demands to delay and should take a final vote on these standards this week,” he said.
Some opponents to the SBOE’s proposed changes have previously suggested that they should hold off a vote until new SBOE members take office in January — though that strategy was seldom heard of at either today’s or Tuesday’s meetings.
Peggy Venable, director of Americans for Prosperity-Texas and a contributing editor of LSR, held up a print ad from a newspaper paid for by the American Atheists which, along with an altered photo of Mount Rushmore, alleged that the SBOE took out Thomas Jefferson from the curriculum standards. Venable called it an “outright lie.”
