The thing I love about public schools is their ability to present students with all viewpoints. We don't want our children to be HSQD's who do things because their parents told them to.
But once again, parents who probably don't care about their children anyway are upset that schools are opening the minds of children.
According to a story in the Denver Post, a panel at Boulder High School titles "STDs: Sex, Teens and Drugs" exposed high school children to a range of reasonable viewpoints.
"I'm going to encourage you to have sex, and I'm going to encourage you to use drugs appropriately," panelist Joel Becker, a Los Angeles clinical psychologist, told the students. "And why I am going to take that position is because you're going to do it anyway."
Some parents were upset at this, but really, if they were good parents, they shouldn't be worried that listening to one talk would cause their kids to have sex and do drugs.
Besides, this was just one of the viewpoints presented in the discussion.
But the panelists also encouraged the students to be responsible, to be educated and to make good choices."
This is about thinking about the choices you're making today and how they're going to affect you over the long haul," said Andee Gerhardt, a community-engagement leader with Ernst and Young.
Supposedly some of the language used in the discussion was considered too inappropriate to be read at a school board meeting. Some on the board asked school officials to investigate the language. Come on, I'm sure the high school students hear much worse every day.
This is just another example of lazy parents who get upset when teachers are doing their best to present their children with diverse viewpoints. Why don't they just get out of the way and let the professionals shape the minds of their children? Education schools teach future teachers about all the important theories related to education, such as queer theory, feminist theory, critical race theory, etc. Teachers are also committed to forming citizens who can participate in a democracy. I wish I could say the same for most parents.
