For years the liberals have been busy creating a boogeyman out of so-called “right-wing extremists” and “fundamentalists” who allegedly are trying to “impose their values” on public schoolchildren. The current controversy about sex education makes clear WHO is doing the imposing: it’s the liberals, specifically Planned Parenthood and the National Education Association.
These two organizations make an effective team working for the goal of dictating that other people’s children must read. Planned Parenthood has a specific curriculum agenda and the NEA has the political muscle to force that curriculum into place.
The Planned Parenthood Federation Association’s Insider Newsletter of My 1988 boasted that two states, Virginia and Iowa, had just passed “comprehensive K-12 sexuality education mandates” after participating in the “Sexuality Education Project” developed by Planned Parenthood’s Public Affairs Division. “Mandate” is a legislative word that means compulsion; no other choice is allowed.
“K-12” means that sex education must be “sequentially” taught for 13 years, from kindergarten to 12th grade, many more years than any other subject is taught in the public schools. Since it doesn’t take very long to tell anyone about sex, you can imagine how much redundancy is imposed on the pupils.
“Comprehensive” means that: (1) the “education” must be integrated throughout several subjects, thereby making it difficult-to-impossible for parents to identify what is being taught, or to inspect the materials, or to withdraw their children from the course, and (2) it must include teaching about contraceptives, masturbation and homosexuality.
Over the strenuous objections of the conservative and pro-family movement, the Virginia General Assembly passed the Planned Parenthood mandate in early 1988. The credit (or blame) for this legislation goes primarily to Governor Gerald Baliles.
This is shaping up as an issue in the forthcoming Virginia gubernatorial race. The Democratic nominee, Douglas Wilder, as Lieutenant Governor, cast the tie-breaking vote in favor of a state mandate and against local option to deal with this sensitive subject while the Republican nominee, Marshall Coleman, has come out publicly against this state-imposed mandate.
The one concession to parents was to require each local school district to set up a Community Involvement Team (CIT) empowered to write its own curriculum if it meets ten state guidelines or to recommend the one written by the state. Most parents consider the CITs just a charade because their members were hand-picked as known advocates of “comprehensive” sexuality courses.
In Fairfax County, Virginia, which has received much publicity because it is a Washington D.C. suburb, the CIT wrote its own curriculum and came up with 400 “learning objectives” for the sex education course instead of the 120 in the state-written curriculum. These learning objectives include not only forcing pupils to discuss contraceptives, masturbation and homosexuality, but even autoerotic asphyxia deaths.
An autoerotic asphyxia death is death caused by masturbating while hanging yourself in an attempt to achieve a special “high” while air is beginning to be cut off because of the noose. The intent is to cut loose from the rope before strangulation, but some lose consciousness first. No teenager would think up such bizarre behavior unless someone described it to him.
So now, the “sexperts” in Virginia are proposing that this, along with homosexuality, be described and discussed in the ninth grade. It’s no wonder that parents are upset and now attend Virginia school board meetings and hearings in record numbers, opposing the mandated curriculum by two-to-one.
There is much, much more. First graders are to be taught to use and discuss the correct terminology for private body parts and their functions. Third graders are to be taught about sexual intercourse. Fifth graders are to be told to oppose “sexual stereotypes” (such as that girls are more apt to grow up to be mothers than construction workers).
Planned Parenthood’s newsletter reveals that the next “targets” for “comprehensive K-12 sexuality education mandates” are Ohio, Connecticut, Illinois and Texas. The organization’s stated goal is to have “15 states with kindergartens through 12th grade sexuality education mandates by 1990.”
Planned Parenthood offers targeted states “technical assistance; a sexuality education consultant who will help develop strategies; and an information network on national development.” When this type of well-financed back up is melded with NEA’s team of tax-salaried lobbyists at state capitols, many legislators are bamboozled.
The NEA and Planned Parenthood treat parents as if they know nothing about sex and as if schools have a right to do anything they want with schoolchildren. At the very least, this is terrible public relations and contributes mightily to the low prestige of public schools today.
At any rate, we finally know WHO is imposing values on WHOM.
