The Funny Part Is Getting This Information From Across The Pond

The Texas state legislature has banned students from any kind of assignment that involves "direct communication" with elected officials. No meeting with city councilmembers, no showing up at school board meetings, nothing. What the actual fuck. https://t.co/ffaajfm7zb

— Amanda Litman (@amandalitman) May 1, 2023

And from a "librul" news outlet, no less.

Just another item most Texans are unaware of/don't give a wet snap about.  I keep beating this drum, but Texas has "independent school districts" which are local taxing authorities which levy and collect taxes through their own efforts.  So taxpayers (property tax payers) glibly assume the money paid all goes to the school district.  But that hasn't been true for almost 50 years.

Texas has a $30 billion budget surplus.  $10 billion of that is from school taxes, which go to Austin and then are "redistributed" to the school districts.  It wasn't always that way, but the Texas Supreme Court decided the funding system was unconstitutional (state, not federal) because wealthy districts had nice schools and good teachers, and poor schools were lucky to have a building that was habitable.  I'm not exaggerating.  So the Lege set up a system to collect and redistribute school taxes, known commonly as "Robin Hood."

And everybody in Texas went back to sleep.  And by and large, they have no idea how their public schools are paid for.  Nor how much of the money collected goes to the state to make up for what the state doesn't collect in sales tax (the only statewide tax allowed).  Nor how little money comes back to the schools.

And then there's this:

Since Texas lawmakers in 2021 passed a ban on lessons teaching that any one group is “inherently racist, sexist or oppressive”, a little-noticed provision of that legislation has triggered a massive fallout for civics education across the state.

Tucked into page 8 is a stipulation outlawing all assignments involving “direct communication” between students and their federal, state or local officials – short-circuiting the training young Texans receive to participate in democracy itself.

Because, you know, "libruls":

The sections of the 2021 law limiting civic engagement pull directly from model legislation authored by the conservative scholar Stanley Kurtz, whose extensive writings seek to link an approach called “action civics” – what he calls “woke civics” – with leftist activism.

Kurtz argues the practice is a form of political “indoctrination” under the “deceptively soothing” heading of “civics”, a cause long celebrated on both the right and the left. 

Our children should not be "woke."  So they should be asleep?

Mabel Zhu, who took the same class two years later, said the experience was “life-changing”, igniting her passion for civic engagement for years to come.

After the class, she began working with local nonprofits and served as the youth adviser on the Bastrop city council. She collaborated with the Cultural Arts Board to put up a mural that will define her city’s downtown space for years to come. A waving flag on the painting proclaims: “The future is ours!”

“Without [the class], I wouldn’t have been able to make such an impact within my community,” Zhu said.

But now, Tufts’s Kawashima-Ginsberg says, the new law may result in a generation of Texans growing up with a stunted sense of citizenship.

“It’s going to really damage their idea of what democracy is,” she said. 

Feature, not bug.

The Lege this year wants to defund public schools and provide money to people who can afford private schooling.  They want to destroy public schools, a goal that is also an effort by groups promoting just this model for public schools (Arkansas didn't do it because they wanted to emulate Texas).

Features; not bugs.

And Resolute Square is a bit behind the power curve on this one:

Texas' attacks on young and future voters are coming from multiple directions. They want to eliminate organizing and voting on college campuses, raise the voting age to 21, and stop public school children from being given assignments that involve talking with elected officials. https://t.co/m5J0ZJIcMW

— Resolute Square (@ResoluteSquare) May 1, 2023

The Lege doesn't want to stop children from doing school assignments to talk to public officials. They did stop it; 2 years ago.

It's always worse than you think, eh?