Common Core: Going Beyond Sex-Ed

Parents in El Paso, Texas are outraged over an “inappropriate” homework assignment given to fourth graders at Pasodale Elementary School. Students were asked to read passages about a wife discovering her husband cheated and a mother finding out her military son was killed.

Then they had to answer questions about the adult-themed topics in the assignment below:

“Valerie opened up the letter from the military department. She felt the pit of her stomach drop to the bottom of the earth before she even opened it. She knew it was news about John. As she read the first line, she thought of all of the lunches she had packed him and all the nights she tucked him in his bed and warded off the nighttime monsters. The man carrying the flag put his hand on her shoulder. She thought of the day that John signed up for the military. Her tears wet the letter. She stopped reading after the first line.”

What does the letter say?

What is Valerie’s relationship to John?

Ruby sat on the bed she shared with her husband holding a hairclip. There was something mysterious and powerful about the cheaply manufactured neon clip that she was fondling suspiciously. She didn’t recognize the hairclip. It was too big to be their daughter’s, and Ruby was sure that it wasn’t hers. She hadn’t had friends over in weeks but there was this hairclip, little and green with a few long black hair strands caught in it. Ruby ran her fingers through her own blonde hair. She had just been vacuuming when she noticed this small, bright green object under the bed. Now their life would never be the same. She would wait here until Mike returned home.

Why is Ruby so affected by the hairclip?

How has the hairclip affected Ruby’s relationship?

Parents became aware of the in-class assignment after some kids didn’t finish it in time and brought it home. The school has since apologized and promised to investigate.

Last year in Arizona, students at Playa Del Rey Elementary School were asked to read the same passages. In that instance, the teacher hadn’t read the assignment and immediately apologized.

A middle school sex education book has some parents in Missouri outraged. The book called, “It’s Perfectly Normal,” is for kids 10 and up, featuring cartoon illustrations of people involved in sexual acts.

The American Library Association ranked it the most challenged book of 2005. A father with two children at Francis Howell School District has filed a formal complaint, but the book remains at the school’s library.

Local parent Tim Schmidt says there are explicit drawings and illustrations of people having sex.  Schmidt filed a formal complaint requesting that the material be removed from the library.

School administrators say the book is only available through the library and only in eBook form.  They stress that this book is not a part of the regular curriculum.

District officials say “it was determined to keep the e-book available as a resource for check-out in the library. If a parent determines that he/she does not want to their child to have access to certain materials, we honor that request.”

Not all parents were upset by the book.  June Tiller says she is glad that the students have access to material that will “help keep them safe”.

In August of last year, the Washington Post published an opinion piece advocating decriminalizing of student-teacher sex. Betsy Karasik’s op-ed, “Sex Between Students and Teachers Should Not be Illegal” goes so far as to claim that a Montana teacher’s 30 days in jail for raping a 14-year old student was unfair to the teacher

“As protesters decry the leniency of (Stacey) Rambold’s sentence — he will spend 30 days in prison after pleading guilty to raping 14-year-old Cherice Morales, who committed suicide at age 16 — I find myself troubled for the opposite reason. I don’t believe that all sexual conduct between underage students and teachers should necessarily be classified as rape, and I believe that absent extenuating circumstances, consensual sexual activity between teachers and students should not be criminalized.”

That means ending the laws that bar “inter-generational” sex: “Laws related to statutory rape are in place to protect children, but the issue of underage sex, and certainly of sex between students and teachers, may be one in which the law of unintended consequences is causing so much damage that society needs to reassess.”

Karasik doesn’t explain how society is “damaged” by protecting children from predatory teachers other than to imply that Morales might not have committed suicide had the criminal case not been pending.

But the news isn’t all bad…

!4-year old Marina Baer watched her father get dragged away by a police officer after he violated the two-minute rule at a school board meeting in Gilford, New Hampshire. The dad, William Baer, was speaking out against the sexually graphic content found in a book assigned to his young daughter.

“I just watched my father get arrested because he broke the two-minute rule, at a board of education meeting,” she said. “This just shows that you resort to force at the first turn of conflict and I am appalled. So I don’t trust you — I haven’t and I honestly don’t feel safe around you people.”

The book in question, Jodi Picoult’s ‘Nineteen Minutes,’ is set in a small town, and tells the story of the events leading up to a shooting and what followed, but Picoult’s book also depicts a rape scene on page 313 from beginning to end.

“‘Relax,’ Matt murmured, and then he sank his teeth into her shoulder. He pinned her hands over her head and ground his hips against hers. She could feel his erection, hot against her stomach. ”

… She couldn’t remember ever feeling so heavy, as if her heart were beating between her legs. She clawed at Matt’s back to bring him closer. “‘Yeah,’ he groaned, and her pushed her thighs apart. And then suddenly Matt was inside her, pumping so hard that she scooted backward on the carpet, burning the backs of her legs.

… (H)e clamped his hand over her mouth and drove harder and harder until Josie felt him come.

“Semen, sticky and hot, pooled on the carpet beneath her.”

The Gilford School Board later apologized for the “discomfort” the controversial book assignment caused and vowed to allow parents to “accept” material rather than “opt out.”