Another Good Reason to Homeschool

Last week a 13 year old girl came home and mentioned to her dad that she saw a poster at school that had her pretty upset.  As soon as her dad heard about it he became pretty upset too.  Actually, he became very upset.He called the school, Hocker Grove Middle School in Shawnee, Kansas, and demanded to know what was up.  He was told that the poster was actually a teaching aid in support of abstinence and that it had been approved by the District.  He couldn’t believe that no one at the school thought it inappropriate.

As well, many other parents came out in support of the curriculum, although most had some misgivings about the poster.  What it seems to come down to is whose responsibility is this kind of material and at what age should it be presented?  Should the parents at least be informed of the contents of the curriculum and given the opportunity to withdraw their children from the class?

These are the sort of problems that do not go away and as long as public schools need to teach kids from a wide range of socio-economic backgrounds there will be some parents who are outraged, some who are supportive, and some who just don’t care.  If you are a homeschooler you can feel relief that it is not your problem and that control over what is presented to your child is yours alone.

We all, however, should ponder the direction we are being driven by our culture as a whole and the role that public schooling takes in influencing that direction.  Most of us can agree that we are not where we would like to be at this time.  How much of that can be laid at the feet of the public school system?  Put yourself in this parent’s place and ask yourself how you would feel.

(Eventually, because of the row it caused, with the national press jumping on it, the poster was withdrawn from the program for “re-evaluation”.)

For more views on this story, we recommend these links:


(The Atlantic)

Does this sex ed poster go too far? (She knows Parenting blog)

About Meg Rayborn Dawson

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