The New York City Board of Education has developed a massive new Sex Education Program (SEP) and is now trying to implement it in the public schools from pre-kindergarten through senior high school. Its 293 pages are about 282 pages longer than necessary to instruct pupils in the facts of life; the rest is classroom fun and games designed to lead the child to believe that “family structures” have changed, that alternate sexual behavior is acceptable, and that “responsible” sex can include “sexual activity” among teenagers, homosexuality, abortion, and contraceptives.
One of SEP’s major teaching tactics is “role-playing” — getting pupils of every age to act out roles in various emotional situations. SEP’s “role-play portfolio” includes instructing the children to act out these situations: (1) pretend your parents are getting a divorce; (2) pretend you are having a conflict with your parents; (3) pretend someone you know is pregnant; discuss the options she has to choose from “including teenage marriage, adoption, single parenthood, foster care, extended family, abortion.”
Other role-playing situations recommended are: (4) a boy tells his girlfriend that he contracted syphilis from somebody else; (5) a boy tells his girlfriend that he has gonorrhea; (6) you live in a “reconstituted family” and “you’re asked to share your bedroom with an offspring of your parent’s mate”; (7) pretend you live with a single parent; pretend “you are the opposite sex and list three life goals you would have”; (8) have a female invite a male on a date.
Another teaching technique is called the “grab bag.” The teacher has the students write “descriptions of different situations in which couples are having sexual relations but are not planning on a pregnancy.” The papers are put in a grab bag and drawn out one by one. The pupils discuss and evaluate the various methods of contraception and select the best contraceptive “to fit each particular situation.”
SEP grievously invades the privacy of the pupil and his family. Big Brother may not be watching you in 1984, but, with SEP, the child is spying on parents.
Pupils in pre-kindergarten through grade 2 are told to tell what happened “in their home when mom was having a baby,” and to “discuss what are some of the ways your parents show love for each other.” Pupils are told to discuss “what is your present relationship with your parents,” and to tell about times you disagree with “decisions made by your parents.” The child is instructed to “describe your family,” and to “interview a grandparent or older adult in your family” and ask all sorts of personal questions.
Of course, being a public school course, SEP does not tell pupils that premarital sex is wrong; the teacher would be forbidden to do that. Instead, the pupil is instructed “to identify and evaluate the choices involved in sexual expression.” The choices then listed for the student are “abstinence, sexual fantasy, masturbation, hugging, kissing, petting, exploration, intercourse, nocturnal emission or wet dreams, sexual preference, homosexual preference, homosexual experience, gay, lesbian, bisexual, transvestite, transsexual.”
A persistent undercurrent of SEP is its attempt to teach pupils to be tolerant of homosexuals. “Experimental sex play” with persons of the same sex is described as “not unusual” among 5th and 6th grade children. SEP presents “homosexual experimentation” as normal behavior of 14-to-16-year-olds. SEP states that “most child molesters are heterosexual males and not homosexuals.”
SEP uses the child to reach into the home and change the gender-identity values of the individual family. The child must tell the teacher whether it is “an advantage or disadvantage to be a boy or a girl in your family.” The child is given the feminist drill on the need to eliminate “sexual stereotyping,” required to “list various household jobs that are performed by males, females, or both in your family,” and then induced to “arrive at sharing responsibilities in your own home.”
Whoever made up SEP isn’t a very good judge of the maturity/immaturity quotient of children at different ages. SEP forces explicit discussions of sexuality and genitalia on little children at the kindergarten and primary grade levels. On the other hand, senior high school students are told to describe themselves in terms of nonpersonal objects and explain why they chose the particular subject. The example given is, “what food are you? I am a grapefruit because I’m well-rounded.”
Shouldn’t schools concentrate on teaching the basics?
