Posted on 02/18/2005 1:00:51 PM PST by colorcountry
The topic of homosexuality is taboo in the Nebo School District.
So the school district in southern Utah County is having trouble finding a replacement for outmoded psychology textbooks at its three high schools.
Priscilla Leek, a Springville High School psychology teacher who sits on a district committee that reviews teaching materials, says the world has changed in the seven years since the district last chose a psychology textbook.
"Most publishers have now included small amounts - a paragraph or couple of pages - in texts about homosexuality," Leek said. "I don't teach homosexuality. But if it appears in a textbook, there's nothing I can do to keep students from reading it."
Despite their difficulty in finding new basic-level psychology schoolbooks, Nebo school board members told Leek and others this week to keep on looking.
State law bans teachers or texts from advocating homosexuality, but Nebo District's policy is more restrictive.
"Our policy is that it will not be taught unless it is teaching the negative consequences thereof," said Nedra Call, Nebo's director of curriculum.
(Excerpt) Read more at sltrib.com ...
The only think that you need to know about psychology and homosexuality is that it is a mental disorder, and not one single psychological experiment or study has ever proven it to be otherwise... it was dropped from their guides over politics not new science.
While the specific experiments the Nazi's did lacked scientific validity, the concept of head size as being related to psychiatric problems is quite valid, as recent advances in autism research have shown.
http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2002/07/020724080815.htm
Early efforts in any scientific field are later found to be deficient and largely wrong, but the early efforts nonetheless are essential precursors to the later, more successful efforts.
I think the problem of public and private insurance coverage for mental illness is a serious one, not because mental illness and the professions that treat it aren't legitimate, but because the interplay between real mental illness and plain old attitude problems is extremely complex, and it's utterly impossible to separate the two in any way that's workable for insurance bureaucracies. I know someone who clearly has very real brain chemistry problems, causing psychiatric symptoms (serious depression, anxiety, completely reversed sleep schedule, and lack of appetite) for which she is being medicated with partial success. But the fact that trying different medications has brought some relief from the organically-based problems has, in my opinion, distracted her and her psychiatrist and therapist from the fact that she also desperately needs to readjust her thinking on a lot of topics. However, her counterproductive thinking patterns are at least partly the result of years of untreated, very real organic problems. Right now she really needs continued medication and professional monitoring, but without some well-placed kicks-in-the-behind, those will be a limited benefit. But how does an insurer contractually commit to cover medication and talk-therapy, only if those are accompanied by kicks-in-the-behind from people the patient interacts with in her daily life? That's the combination that's usually needed, but there's no way systematically ensure its delivery as a complete package.
Excerpt:
"Our policy is that it will not be taught unless it is teaching the negative consequences thereof," said Nedra Call, Nebo's director of curriculum.
:::::Applause:::::
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You GO, Nebo!
And this is how it SHOULD be.
"I suppose it's an improvement over teaching "they" should be burned at the stake, however."
And what exactly is that supposed to mean?
Could you cite the studies, preferably with urls?
Are people who were mentally ill last year not ill this year?
Believe it or not!
When I went to school homosexuals were perverts and degenerates (not to be confused with the comedian).
When my kids went to school homosexuals were mentally ill.
Now they are as normal as you or me.
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