Azrael Montoya
amontoya@foghornnews.com
One of the significant issues parents face is sexual education for their child. Parents entrust their children to the teachers of sexual public education. Sexual education and charity should start and end in the home. Teaching children about sex at an early age before their personalities are fully formed is an important part of family life.
The Corpus Christi Independent School District has taught a public sexual education curriculum for 18 years. In accordance with Texas Education Code Chapter 115, which changes from year to year, they provide an abstinence curriculum. They cover things such as risky behaviors, positive and negative relationships, and sexual and physical health.
According to Susan Holt, the executive director for curriculum instruction, this wide array of community options goes through a School Health Advisory Committee and then the parents get to choose the curriculum they want for their children so that the school board may implement it.
“The district, while attempting to meet the health mandates, also has procedures in place that allows the community and the parents to have a part in the decision making process in the best interest of the students,” Holt said. The students in the district usually are given the curriculum around age 11 or 12.
According to the Office of Adolescent Health, Texas was ranked fifth in the nation on final 2014 teen birth rates among females aged 15-19. According to the Huffington Post article in November 2013, “Texas School District Sex Education Compares Non Virgins To Chewed Gum,” sexual health advocate Katie Gustainis Vela obtained what appears to be an instructional worksheet which “likens people who have premarital sex to pieces of chewed gum or used toothbrushes.” This lecture worksheet came out of the Canyon ISD in upper mid Texas.
According to the Center for Disease Control, Texas checks in at No. 11 on the list of states with the highest rates of reported STDs. Sexually transmitted diseases can cripple a child’s self concept, physical and emotional health for years to come. David Wiley a Texas State University health professor, has said, “We’re creating generation after generation after generation of sexually illiterate adults.”
Federal funding to the states is a significant catalyst for sexual public education. Money does indeed talk but in this case it is demonstrably silent. In December 2009 President Barack Obama signed the Consolidated Appropriations Act of 2010, which included $110 million for the president’s Teen Pregnancy Prevention Initiative. A portion of the funding, $25 million, was made available for research and demonstration grants.
Big daddy government is ineffective. The state in this area of sex education is raising these children, essentially.
Lastly, children are being hit with so much information that it’s dangerous to assume what they know. Parents must guard their children and teach them about human sexuality the right way. And with the government’s numerous failures, it’s the same story with different costumes.
