2. Texas Allows Religious And Social Conservatives To Dictate What's In School Books.
Texas' State School Board of Education is a 15-member elected group of individuals who have enormous power in what students in this state are taught, or at least what materials end up or don't end up in their school books. In recent years, there has been a lot of controversy surrounding the content that the state board has approved, including misrepresentations of world religions, and portraying national tragedies such as slavery in a
less critical way than is deserved. Compounding those controversies is the national reaction to it, since textbooks approved in Texas are
used in other states as well. So in a very real way, the decisions of 15 people, some of which are outspokenly religious and socially conservative, influence the educations of millions of kids in this state and others. Some people within the publishing industry claim that Texas doesn't control textbook content as much as people think, and that technological advances will make it even less so in the future, but the situation still makes our state look like the punchline in an unfunny joke.
1. Texas Is A World Leader... In Executions.
As more and more foreign countries and American states cease the killing of people convicted of anything from murder to social protest, Texas looks more and more out of step with other civilized societies. The "eye for an eye" style of "Justice" is still popular in places like Iraq and China, but it's being abandoned by many others. The US is in the
top five countries worldwide when it comes to numbers of people executed, and Texas
leads our nation in them. It's hard to feel good about that when a person considers just how many people sentenced to death in this country have
been exonerated by new evidence, or how studies show the death penalty probably
isn't a deterrent to other criminals, and also
costs the state more than imprisoning someone for life.
Most people opposed to the death penalty aren't arguing that we should just let dangerous criminals run free, or that they shouldn't be harshly punished, but there are too many problems with capital punishment to allow it a place in a civilized society. Texas is a leader in many many things, but we shouldn't be a leader in executions.
As I said earlier, Texas is a great state, but it's not perfect - No place is. Rather than ignoring real problems or never trying to improve, Texans should work together to fix these issues.
