Education
As Americans traditionally have almost no paid vacations, they are quick to send their children to school or nursery. At this stage, the public school system takes care of the little ones, but from an early age they can also be catered for by numerous private schools. Since the 1980s, the public education system has deteriorated, and today it's generally better to send your children to private school if you want to ensure they get a good education. So, much more than elsewhere, access to education is not the same for all, and this system separates the poorest from the richest. What you also see in Texas, as in many southern states, is the presence of private religious schools, both Catholic and Protestant. Don't be surprised by this, it's normal. When it comes to higher education, local Texans can take advantage of lower tuition fees for Texas universities. For example, for the University of Texas, a Texan will pay $11,752USD per year instead of $50,000USD. These figures may seem absurd, but university access is very expensive in the USA, with some of the top schools reaching $70,000USD a year. This system excludes thousands of students nationwide from the school system every year. Every family that can afford it borrows, and young people pay it back when they start work, i.e., when they enter the workforce in debt. School-leaving salaries are often considered higher than in France, but loan repayments must be taken into account. What we call "lycée", Americans call high school, and the first four years of university are called college. After that, you can go on to graduate school, which might currently correspond to the training required to acquire a Master 2. Today, 90% of high school students graduate from high school. Texas' top universities are Rice University, Baylor University, University of Houston and University of Texas at Austin, attracting thousands of Americans from all over the country.
Daily life style
The car is at the heart of everyday life and is the most widespread means of transport. It's how we get to the supermarket, the restaurant, the bank, the post office, with some establishments transformed into drive-thru facilities, meaning that we don't even have to leave the steering wheel to send mail. Given that you can get your driver's license at a very young age, it's also in or through the car that young teenagers entertain themselves. In Texas, the climate means you have to use air conditioning, sometimes to excess. Don't be surprised to find yourself shivering in a restaurant when it's 38°C outside. A lot of attention is paid to indoor spaces rather than outdoor ones, as people are constantly moving between enclosed spaces: the home, the car, and the destination. In terms of food, it's easier to feast than to eat well, i.e. to eat healthy, wholesome food. The poorer classes suffer from this, with quite severe obesity rates. Most of the time, this lack of access to good food is compensated for by intensive sports activities.
Leisure and consumption
As a consumer society, consumption is how people spend their free time, between cinemas, bars, gyms, yoga, tex-mex, bowling, rodeos and so on. Consumption of food or consumption of entertainment, there isn't really a public space without consumption, apart perhaps from parks and green spaces. The street itself is not a place for hobbies; those in city centers are often the only ones with remarkable architecture, where there is a greater concentration of homeless people. Thus, restaurants are a very common place to frequent, as it's even more usual to eat out than to cook at home. A middle-class couple in Houston, for example, will easily eat out three or more times a week. Texans are also big sports fans. Soccer, basketball and baseball teams draw big crowds.
Birth
Texas has one of the highest birth rates among young teenage women, with 22.4 births per 1,000 women between the ages of 15 and 19. Many experts who have studied the subject believe that this phenomenon is a direct consequence of the Texas state's policy on access to contraceptives, which some conservatives believe should be banned. Here, more than anywhere else, parental consent is required for contraception. The sexual abstinence campaigns offered in public schools are showing their limits, especially since the Supreme Court's reversal of Roe v. Wade, which previously guaranteed the right to abortion, is likely to drive up the teenage birth rate. Conversely, New Mexico has retained abortion as a right, although the number of clinics providing it has declined.
Social protection
Welfare is the responsibility of the federal government. Its budget varies considerably from state to state. Under the pretext that welfare "allows the most disadvantaged to remain in a state of perpetual assistance", the welfare system was dismantled under President Bill Clinton, who was "more in favor of employment than assistance". The fact that one cannot exist without the other is a very American mentality, where work is sacred and anyone who doesn't work is frowned upon, making times of crisis all the more difficult. George Bush had accelerated this work of reducing social protection, while Obama had taken the opposite path with the Obamacare reform in 2012. The state of Texas is still not in favor of Welfare, seen as a generator of laziness and passivity. Donald Trump confirmed his willingness to repealObamacare during his campaign, unlike his successor Joe Biden, Obama's former vice-president. Very different from France's, Social Security does exist, but only for specific categories of the population. There is Medicare for the over-65s and the disabled, and Medicaid for low-income individuals and families. Other Americans must subscribe to private medical insurance plans paid for out of their salaries. Note that social security is known as welfare, whereas social security corresponds to retirement pensions.
Military service and patriotism
Since the end of the Vietnam War, the army has been an all-volunteer force. No one can be forced to enlist. The case of the famous boxer Mohammed Ali, who was imprisoned for refusing to fight in the war, made a deep impression on public opinion. That said, unlike in France, the military is highly regarded by Americans, and sometimes even enjoys an almost sacred social status. All the more so as American patriotism is extremely strong in the U.S., where it's a recurrent occurrence that schoolchildren are obliged to sing the national anthem in the morning, putting their hands on their chests as a sign of respect. As a form of anti-racist protest, some sports celebrities have pledged to refuse this military and patriotic salute at the start of televised matches, to symbolically denounce the country's demand for freedom for all. This act is highly provocative, as having anti-American feelings can be perceived as a crime. Those who have served in the military are eligible for free college tuition, which attracts many young people looking to further their education. In Texas, recruitment campaigns are aimed at high school students or young people looking for a financially stable future. Many young Americans who left to fight in Iraq were both students and military professionals. So it should come as no surprise to see soldiers in uniform sitting on the benches of American campuses. 4,474 American soldiers lost their lives on Iraqi soil between the invasion in 2003 and 2011. Just over 400 of them were from Texas. Obama successfully withdrew US troops from Iraq in 2011, followed by Afghanistan in 2014. Trump, meanwhile, launched a military operation against a Syrian air base on the night of April 6-7, 2017, following Bashar al-Assad's chemical weapons attack on a town in northwest Syria. Joe Biden also withdrew American troops from Afghanistan, a withdrawal that was followed by a Taliban takeover that outraged many Republican Americans. Since February 2022, Joe Biden has denounced Vladimir Putin and Russia's invasion of Ukraine, positioning himself militarily in support of the Ukrainian government. Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky visited the White House in December 2022.
Retirement and old age
Texans' retirement pensions are minimal. It's best to have saved throughout your working life, and even invested in profitable sectors. Funded retirement plans are common throughout the country. One of the most famous retirement plans is the 401K, which takes the monthly payments of millions of American employees and places them in investment funds for redistribution once the employees have retired. In rural Texas, the tradition of caring for one's elderly parents persists, an attitude more common in the South than in the northern states. There are also private retirement homes for people at the end of their lives.
