Texas Board Of Education Adopts Curriculum Requiring Discussion Of "Long Term Entitlements"

On Friday, the Texas Board of Education adopted Social Studies standards requiring that teachers discuss "alternatives regarding long term entitlements such as Social Security and Medicare, given the decreasing worker to retiree ratio."

Actually, this is one of the saner items in the new Texas Social Studies curriculum. The problem is that not one teacher in one hundred could intelligently lead such a discussion, about Social Security not because the topic is all that complicated, but because most of what most people, including teachers, think they know about Social Security is not true. I have no doubt that every one of the Board members who voted for this have an ardent belief that Social Security is doomed in the long run and that the only hope is to begin a transition to a privatized Social Security system, a belief that is rubbish. There are fairly simple solutions for Social Security's funding problems. Any sort of transition to privatization makes the problem much worse.

And don't even think about trying to have an intelligent discussion of Medicare. Medicare really is complicated!