As some readers may know, I’m an old guy, born during the middle of the Korean War. Which makes me a time machine.
Listen to me, and I can whisk you back to the late 1960s, when in high school we took biology and health classes. In biology we probably learned about the sperm and the egg, though I don’t remember studying human reproduction then. During the semester we spent in health class, the teacher taught us the dangers of smoking and drinking, but once again, I have no recollection of any discussion about sex.
Over the next three decades, teenage pregnancies, a rise in sexually transmitted diseases, and the AIDS epidemic brought a chorus of demands that our public schools teach sex education. Abstinence, condoms, birth control pills, and protection became buzz words as teachers and school administrators took up teaching a subject that was once the responsibility of parents.
And now here we are, a few more decades later, telling kindergartners and elementary school students that they can choose their gender, that men can become women and enter into female athletic contests, and that our DNA counts for nothing in terms of the sex assigned to us at conception and made obvious at birth. And if the youngsters don’t get the message clearly enough at school, they can find all the propaganda they need at websites that encourage them to transition from male to female or vice versa.
It’s time for a change.
Sex education is an attack on the traditional family and on parents. The state takes the place of mom and dad. Sex ed destroys the innocence of children and emphasizes technique rather than the beauty and mystery of love. It ignores the primary purpose of sexual union, which is to create children and further the species.
And now there’s a spillover from sex ed in the classroom to other parts of school life by way of the transgender agenda, a fact which Elle Reynolds addresses in an article for The Federalist. She recounts incidents in which teachers and administrators have encouraged students to switch genders while keeping that transformation a secret from their parents. She describes some of the lewd books that are appearing in school libraries around the country, literature that often includes graphic pictures and that promotes masturbation, oral sex, and transgender ideology. Absent are any materials or discussions on the meaning of marriage or the importance of the family.
Meanwhile, American students have fallen behind in their academic studies while schools have been so focused on teaching these various sexual deviations. In some high schools, seniors read at an elementary school level. Compared to elementary and secondary students in countries around the world, students in the United States rank 38th in math scores and 24th in their knowledge of science.
Maybe it’s time to back away from sex education in elementary school. Let’s stop promoting in the elementary classroom certain sexual lifestyles. Instead, let’s teach our students the attributes that should accompany sex: love and responsibility.
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Jeff Minick lives in Front Royal, Virginia, and may be found online at jeffminick.com. He is the author of two novels, Amanda Bell and Dust on Their Wings, and two works of non-fiction, Learning as I Go and Movies Make the Man.