Chicago
has a lot of problems, as if having Rahm Emanuel as mayor wasn’t
enough.
Out of
over 500 murders in 2012, 443
were committed by firearms despite the city having a near total ban
on guns, giving the city a higher murder rate than New
York City, which has
nearly TRIPLE the population of Chicago. The third largest public
school system in the nation, with approximately 431,000 students, had
a $1
BILLION
(yes, you read that correctly) budget shortfall, which forced the
layoffs of 2,968 total school
employees
- 1,456 of
those were teachers - as well as the closings of fifty schools.
Seriously, the list could go on and on.
The
latest curriculum addition from the wondrous and wonderful public
school district, instituted at the beginning of this school year (and
remember, they were expecting to be $1 billion in the red this year):
Sexual
education
for all children in the school district. Every child, every grade –
even kindergartners.
I very much wish that was a joke, but sadly, it isn’t.
None of
the educators or politicians seemed to have a big problem with this,
either. After all, they tried, and failed, to pass a bill for the
entire state
when President Obama was just lowly state senator Obama. SB99, which
is, as far as I can tell, as similar to these new regulations as to
be virtually identical, pushed for eliminating all references to
marriage in the Illinois
sex education code, and required that all material used in classrooms
be age – and developmentally appropriate and medically accurate. It
would also have expanded sexual education to students in kindergarten
through fifth grade and mandated that students be taught the age of
consent, positive communication skills, and that they [the student]
have the power to control behavior.
I’m
quite sure that the school district, as a whole, has the best of
intentions. The problem is whether or not sexual education is a role
the State should have in the lives of our children. Will
parents be allowed to decide whether or not their kids are exposed to
this until the parents believe the time is right? Remember,
we’re talking about children as young as five.
I’m
not against sexual education. I just happen to believe that parents,
and parents alone, should make the determination when
that education should begin. It should certainly not be mandatory for
a child in kindergarten. I went to Catholic schools for most of my
formative years, and even there we had some
form of sexual education. It wasn’t much, given the teaching
source, and it certainly focused more on abstinence than anything
else, but it got the job done. My parents filled in the gaps, and
therein lies the point of this blog post.
We can
debate the usefulness of sex-ed courses, and the role it does or
doesn’t have on teen pregnancy, teen sexual activity, the
transmission or prevention of HIV
and other sexually transmitted diseases, etc., and that is
a worthy debate, but when 79% of students in your school district
can’t read at their own grade level,
is teaching sex-ed to 5-year-olds really the best and most
cost-efficient use of money for an already cash-strapped school
district?
One
thing I’d really like to know – are they going to teach the kids
that abstinence is the only tried-and-true, 100% guaranteed method to
prevent pregnancy and STD’s? I’m not going to hold my breath…
This is
just one, glaringly obvious
example of why conservatives say there's more indoctrination
than education in the
public school system. ~ Hunter
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