Sound Politics: Sex-ed bill

April 12, 2007

Sex-ed bill

The House passed the "medically accurate" sex-education bill yesterday on a nearly party-line 63-34 vote, after four hours of debate and after rejecting all 30+ amendments offered by Republicans.

The punchline is that any public school district that chooses to teach sex education must use a curriculum approved by the OSPI as

medically and scientifically accurate, age-appropriate, appropriate for students regardless of gender, race, disability status, or sexual orientation

Without getting into the specifics of the competing philosophies on sex education, I think the whole controversy is overblown and reflects a misplaced confidence in the ability of government schools to both select an appropriate curriculum and to deliver it effectively.

I personally wouldn't look to government schools to teach my kids about sex any more than I would look to them to teach, say, race relations or mathematics.

Posted by Stefan Sharkansky at April 12, 2007 10:16 AM | Email This

Comments

1. Good point about the state not teching much math (or any other academic subject) these days. I'd like to get my money's worth out of the education system, but there are entrenched special interest groups that have vested interest in the status quo.

As far as sex education goes, as long as there are zero out-of-wedlock births and no teenagers saddling us with the bill associated with raising kids, I'm a happy camper. I wasn't put on this planet to pay for the bad behsvior of others.

Posted by: Libertarian on April 12, 2007 10:20 AM

2. Just to see how far we've come in abandoning our civilization....
Out of wedlock babies have always been a problem. Often alientating mother and child from family and society. But..
The Baby is not sin. The act of sex is the sin.
We now teach that sex without babies is perfectly reasonable.

Posted by: ljm on April 12, 2007 10:38 AM

3. The problem with the current system is a one size fits all approach to everything. Every population of kids is different. The real issue is how much control parents in public school will have about the direction their kids life choices will take.
This proposal will probably get more values parents out of public schools. The statement posed by Libertarian is interesting because I believe that teenage births without marriage are decreasing, but births among 20s and 30s without marriage are going up. The question is interesting not because of abstinence education which seems to have been the focus of these bills, but because is the real issue the definition of the family. If I read one more report about some couple where the woman is pregnant and her fiancee is with her, I will barf. Don't people get married before having kids any more? The issue is whether we as a society are signaling kids that a family with committed partners is irrelevant? A major issue is the serial partners situation in which many children are being brought up. I have lived long enough to know that there are many types of families, but is what is going on a value judgment embedded in the sex education debate that the traditional heter family is no longer viable? So, that being the case, the social engineers are preparing children for a future of multiple serial or even similtaneous relationships?

Increasingly, many will leave public education because of values and the poor quality of basic education.

I hope that the bill to have Seattle's mayor take over schools is dead.

Posted by: WVH on April 12, 2007 10:42 AM

4. The Republicans spent more time debating medically accurate sex ed than they spent on the operating budget, capital budget and the transportation budget combined.

No wonder they have so few seats.

Posted by: duh on April 12, 2007 10:49 AM

5. medically and scientifically accurate, age-appropriate, appropriate for students regardless of gender, race, disability status, or sexual orientation

That means kids get to learn the ins and outs (pun intended) of gay sex and the merits of a 'reach around'. Fabulous.

Posted by: Palouse on April 12, 2007 10:59 AM

6. Palouse,

Don't leave out the animal lovers. Take the kids on a field trip to Enumclaw so they can learn about safe sex with horses. Also show all kids the movie Zoo.

Hey folks, don't scoff. It's for the kids!

Posted by: teacher's pet on April 12, 2007 11:09 AM

7. Another great example of feature-creep and government bloat. Remember back when school was simple? You learned how to read, write and do math. Now that government schools are getting it to the business of trying to solve every problem, account for every inequity, and cater to every academic level, they are failing miserably.

A sure fire path to failure is to make things much more complex than they need to be.

The record is there for all to see. WA students are worse off then their peers in other states, and at a much higher cost to the taxpayer. It's a bad product at a high price. Throw the bums out.

Posted by: Jeff B. on April 12, 2007 11:22 AM

8. Washington state can't teach the three R's, but when it comes to SEX-ED their on top of it! (pun)

It's no wonder Boeing is forced to go overseas to find it's engineers.

Shame-shame.

Posted by: Army Medic/Vet on April 12, 2007 11:33 AM

9. Does this mean that teachers will perform exhibitions of various sexual techniques for 1st graders? Probably,

Posted by: Paddy on April 12, 2007 11:43 AM

10. Ya gotta love it.

Our children "graduate" to the point they need remedial classes in reading, writing and math so they can go to college...

They can't read, but they'll know everything there is to know about condoms.The Democrats spent more time debating medically accurate sex ed than they spent on the operating budget, capital budget and the transportation budget combined.No wonder we're looking at a $1.5 billion near term deficit; no wonder there are hundreds of millions wasted on pork projects; no wonder they lacked the guts to make a decision on the viaduct. Posted by: Hinton on April 12, 2007 01:24 PM

11. The way this legislature is going, only teachers and homosexual deviants will be left to vote democrat.

Posted by: Rando on April 12, 2007 08:34 PM