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Book burning you wouldn't believe

I wish more of you spoke spanish or that I wasn't so pissed so I could translate this for you. I will tell you however what the main point is.

A few weeks ago I read about some news about the biology book for secondary school (for kids around 12 years of age) published not by the national regulatory secretariat in Mexico (SEP, Secretaría de Educación Pública) but by the state of Guanajuato.

The argument this office had —and they were proud of it— was that Guanajuato's morals were better than those found in the other states and thus could not accept such immoralities as having their children exposed to images of the human sexual apparatuses and information about contraception, so they decided to make their own unauthorized Biology book that removed these vile things and spoke instead of virginity, family and how the only 100% effective way of not getting AIDS was abstinence.

This pissed me off until I read, about one week later, that these books would be pulled off because they had not been approved by the SEP.

The news today are the ones I cannot believe.

People from organizations related to the Mexican politic right have burned the books provided by the national secretariat (SEP) because as one person says: "These books do not educate, all they do is promote promiscuity between young people and incite them to use contraceptive methods". And also "The SEP, in the books, is forcing my children to use condoms, while what I want for them is not to do anything until marriage".

I am as angry as I am scared and ashamed.

Tags: abstinence, aids, book, burning, condom, contraceptive, mexico, only

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Comment by Alejandro Bárcenas Femat on September 3, 2010 at 12:39am: At least we’re lucky (sort of) that the country is mainly catholic and creationism doesn’t stick as much it does in mainly protestant countries, the only active one I’ve seen is that American guy from Zacatecas on youtube.
On the other hand we do have this kind of religious moral problems around the country but at least the capital is full of lefties and that reduces the influence this kind of people has on public organisms like SEP.

Comment by Michelle on October 5, 2009 at 9:35pm: The U.S. has education problems because of such nonsense too, and I'm sure the rest of the world is not exempt. Books (here) are challenged now more than banned or burned, but the reasoning is so frightening it is hard to know how to respond, besides shock and awe. (and educating my child)

Comment by Eduardo on October 5, 2009 at 3:31pm: Here is the link. I coulnd't make it work
http://www.jornada.unam.mx/2009/10/05/index.php?section=estados&article=032n1est