I was a Penn State freshman in 1966, the same year Joe Paterno became head coach of the Nittany Lions. As an aspiring teacher myself, I regarded him as a role model, not only because he was a super-successful football coach, but more because I believed him to be an upright, decent educator. He pushed to fuse academics with athletics, and Penn State students knew this to be his hallmark: a family man teaching values. Having been an educator for years, I cannot think of anything more wonderful than participating with youth, teaching hope, and building for the future.

Because of this, it was a nasty surprise last week when Coach Paterno was fired amid a national scandal which implicates him for neglect, weakness of character, and possible deceit. The revelation that former assistant football coach Jerry Sandusky faces forty counts of sexual abuse and child molestation shocks and disgusts me, and has shocked and disgusted our nation. The public is rightly outraged to learn how children were betrayed and abused by men they trusted and admired.

Recommendations put forward by Dennis Walcott, the New York City schools chancellor, which would mandate explicit sex education for middle school students, call for similar outrage. The regulations require New York City’s public schools to explicitly instruct seventh grade students in a semester-long course about sex and sexuality, and offer only limited opt-outs for parents. (Parents may remove their children only from classes on contraception and birth control.)

All parents ought to stand in opposition to such mandates. Their God-given rights as parents and their children’s future are sabotaged when sexual ideology is promoted in the classroom. The myth of so-called ‘neutral’ or ‘value free’ sex education is a lie: merely exposing children to this material suggests to them that the behavior described is optional or possibly appropriate. Whether parents are Buddhist, Jewish, Islamic, Hindu, Christian, or non-religious, these sensitive personal and moral matters belong to the parent-child relationship.

In fairness, Chancellor Walcott has a very challenging responsibility.  In some inner city schools, as he has pointed out, the sad reality is that “a significant percentage of our teenagers have had multiple sexual partners…”  State interest in reducing sexually transmitted diseases and teen pregnancy is certainly legitimate, but government stipulated curricula must protect rather than destroy the innocence of pre-teenage children. Normalizing immoral behavior by teaching that it can be undertaken in safe and acceptable ways is wrong. In forty-six years as an educator I have met countless school teachers and administrators whose character and integrity speak for themselves. It is by examples such as these that the moral compass of students can and should be set, not by exposing children to sexual images and behaviors that they are not emotionally, spiritually, or relationally prepared for.

Clearly, systemic overhaul is needed.  In the midst of our daily rounds of duties and responsibilities, how then do we better care for our cherished children and for each other?

Two vital clues to this can be found in the Gospels.  Firstly, Christ’s two-thousand year old warnings about misleading a child still apply to us today: “If anyone causes one of these little ones who believe in me to sin, it would be better for him to have a large mill-stone hung around his neck and to be drowned in the depth of the sea.” (Mt. 18:6) The largest school district in America should lead the way in seeking to protect the children in its care.  Secondly, in Romans 12:2 we are told “conform not to the patterns of this world, but be ye transformed by the renewing of your mind.”  Our society, culture, government, schools, and each one of us needs this complete and sincere transformation.  

A minister and member of the Bruderhof, Ian Winter worked for years as a teacher and school administrator. He currently directs Breaking The Cycle, a school anti-violence program: www.breakingthecycle.com

 

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Your Turn. Tell us what you thought about this article:

Responses

I agree with the author. The sacredness of the intimacy between man and woman is better explained by the parents themselves. However, sad to say parenthood is lost to some... a curse of dysfunctionality in the family (drug addiction, alcoholism, immorality, etc.) runs deep. So, how to solve this problem goes deeper than "sex education" being taught at the middle school. Probably , to target this issue is to first understand the basic role of what a family should be. Thank you, God bless the family and God bless America and the world!

Nilda Bernaldez
Tavernier, Fl