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Educational Research Analysts
Standard Review Criteria for Health textbooks
This is not a full course outline, but a guide on what to check in Health textbooks and how to improve them.
 Health textbooks should: 
  1. Avoid asexual stealth phrases and definitions that covertly legitimize homosexuality.
    • "Marriage" and "family" should not mean just "two adults," "two people," "two individuals," "partners," or "a couple," but must specify men and women, husbands and wives, fathers and mothers (same-sex "marriage" and "civil unions" are illegal in Texas).
    • "Romantic affection" should not mean attraction to "other people," but to the opposite sex.
    • "Gender identity" should not mean "sexual orientation," implying that homosexuality is innate, not learned.
    • "Cultures" should not mean "behaviors," normalizing homosexuality under guise of multiculturalism.
    • "Parenting" should not include homosexual "adoptions."

  2. Humanize prenatal development.
    • Respect the personhood of the preborn child by referring to the developing baby, not to "developing cells," the "growing organism," or a "fetus."
    • Call the preborn child "he or she"/"him or her," not a fetal "it."
    • Picture how soon preborn babies look human.
    • Do not enshrine abortion as the moral equivalent of childbirth.

  3. Reflect realities of coeducational classes.
    • Keep sex ed illustrations age-appropriate, not class-disruptive; representational, not sensational; clinical, not titillating.
    • Render external sex organs in artwork, not photos; as cross-sections of side views, not frontal views of full figures.

  4. Expect abstinence instead of just preferring it.
    • Present abstinence, not condoms, as protection against pregnancy and STDs.
    • Include affective and psychomotor as well as cognitive levels in abstinence-based sex ed.
    • Discuss emotional/ethical harm of sexual activity outside marriage.
    • Emphasize monogamy and marital fidelity.

  5. Distinguish "high self-esteem" from narcissism.
    • Stress self-discipline, deferred gratification, high ethical conduct, excellence, maximizing potential, and ability to self-examine and self-criticize.
    • Reject idle self-contemplation, underachievement, and non-competitiveness.

  6. Prioritize parental input, good character, and personal responsibility – not open-endedness – in "decision making" (including dating behaviors).

  7. Advocate teen deference to parental authority in family decision making when compromise fails.

  8. Feature current info on environmental health and sound economic reasoning on resource use.
    • Explain that in the U.S. since the 1970s:
      • Fresh water contamination has fallen 80-90%, based on pollution levels in fish.
      • According to the EPA, air pollution by sulfur dioxide has dropped 70%, by nitrogen oxide has fallen 43%, by carbon monoxide has declined 75%, and by lead is down 98%.
    • Clarify that much pollution is not man-made:
      • Termite digestive processes emit ca. 50 billion tons of CO2 and methane each year – 10 times the CO2 from fossil fuels burned annually.
      • Decayed organic matter, volcanoes, and lightning produce at least 50% of the sulfur and nitrogen in acid rain.
    • Cite the inverse relationship between asthma and industrial air pollution:
      • Developing nations with more industrial air pollution have less asthma.
      • Developed nations with less industrial air pollution have better insulated homes (fouler air), more time spent indoors (computers, videos, TV), and more asthma.
      • Asthma may correlate with obesity.
    • Tell how free-market prices equalize supply and demand, promote voluntary conservation, bring more of a resource to market, and encourage using substitutes.
    • Contrast natural scarcity of resources, with artificial shortages due to government price ceilings.
    • Note benefits of population growth, such as better transportation to larger markets and more creativity.

  9. Teach gun safety but not gun control.
    • Refer to the constitutional right to bear arms.
    • Differentiate between minors and non-felon adults possessing firearms.
    • Acknowledge the possible role of gun ownership in preventing violence.

  10. Word student exercises non-intrusively, eliciting answers in the hypothetical third person, not the first person, not conditioning satisfactory participation on possibly embarrassing self-disclosure.