In part one of this series, I discussed the sexual abuse that is becoming a serious threat in our public school systems, affecting 10% of students. In part two I discussed the increase in negative peer interactions due to a disintegrating of family culture. This would be enough to undermine trust in the idea that public school is a healthy place to socialize a child, but this third subject is the primary cause for concern in my book. There is a growing inability of school administrators to set and model exemplary conduct standards and to make competent and moral judgments over content and discipline.
While deviant student behavior it is not entirely the fault of schools, the school system plays a powerful role in enforcement of standards of conduct for students and staff. There is a wide spread rationalization among parents and educators as to what defines appropriate behavior when related to those things that lead to sexualization of youth; such as basic modesty, speech, media, dance, and music. In most cases the standards are well defined in student handbooks but go unenforced. The neglect of enforcement of exemplary standards by school administrators is sending the message, “do as I say, not as I do.” This neglect is exposing the entire student body to risky behaviors.
While deviant student behavior it is not entirely the fault of schools, the school system plays a powerful role in enforcement of standards of conduct for students and staff. There is a wide spread rationalization among parents and educators as to what defines appropriate behavior when related to those things that lead to sexualization of youth; such as basic modesty, speech, media, dance, and music. In most cases the standards are well defined in student handbooks but go unenforced. The neglect of enforcement of exemplary standards by school administrators is sending the message, “do as I say, not as I do.” This neglect is exposing the entire student body to risky behaviors.
Examples are so numerous and sickening it is impossible to share them all, here is a short list: A recent controversy was sparked over an ‘oral sex’ and ‘anal sex’ poster that was supposedly part of an ‘abstinence-based’ sex-ed lesson. A drama teacher had his students perform a play in which one of the characters falls in love with a goat. The play includes sexually explicit content and vulgar sexual terms." Third graders were given a lesson on adultery that included specific questions designed to make the child curious about what adultery. A federally funded sex education program being piloted in Hawaiian promotes homosexuality to middle school students and presents “medically inaccurate” information, redefining the anus as a “genital.” A Michigan father was angry when he discovered a biology assignment that normalizes "sleeping around." A middle school teacher and part-time actor showed his students a risqué video of himself “partially clothed and in bed with a woman.
School handbooks instruct students to wear appropriate clothing, to speak in clean language, to be respectful and then the school administrators expose our kids to crass sexual content. They expect young men to show respect to young women and are then lax in enforcing dress codes which results in these young men being surrounded daily by bare breasted cleavage and extremely short shorts. A very tall handsome and honorable 16 year old son of one of my friends once expressed his frustration with the revealing clothing girls at his school wore, he said that he often avoided looking down as he walked through the hall because it was impossible to avoid looking straight down their shirts. His shorter buddy joked that he’d like to have that problem.
While administrators are reportedly cracking down on t-shirts with political and even patriotic messages, they are ignoring low cut see through blouses and shorts so short that they reveal the butt cheek when sitting. Students at school dances show off more and more skin as they dance in sexually suggestive ways and administrators are increasingly losing their will to clean it up. Meanwhile teachers and administrators find time find to enforce the really important stuff, like this story from Lucy Elementary School near Memphis, Tenn.: an assignment required each student to pick an idol and write an essay about him or her. A 10-year-old girl chose God as her idol, but the teacher found this unacceptable and demanded that the girl write about someone else. So I guess God’s out as a role model but our kids should find value in morally bankrupt art and language content.
My first public activism and the beginning of my involvement in education politics was as the organizer of a parent's society in my Nebraska school district (where the culture is far less degraded than here in Maryland). Feeling strongly that our district wasn't doing enough to set and enforce higher behavioral standards for students and teachers alike, our goal was to promote policies in our school district that preserved a wholesome environment to foster quality educational and social experiences for our children. We wanted school district administrators and teachers to be committed to preserving our children’s innocence and dignity by effectively implementing exemplary standards.
My first public activism and the beginning of my involvement in education politics was as the organizer of a parent's society in my Nebraska school district (where the culture is far less degraded than here in Maryland). Feeling strongly that our district wasn't doing enough to set and enforce higher behavioral standards for students and teachers alike, our goal was to promote policies in our school district that preserved a wholesome environment to foster quality educational and social experiences for our children. We wanted school district administrators and teachers to be committed to preserving our children’s innocence and dignity by effectively implementing exemplary standards.
The concern that kicked our efforts into gear was a high school football mock striptease act done with administration support in a mandatory student pep-rally. The football players came into the gym bundled up in winter clothes and striped (imitating strippers) to rowdy music until they were in their boxer shorts with their chests painted in school spirit colors. One young man who was there was brave enough to tell his mother how uncomfortable he was, he observed a young woman in front of him blush with embarrassment as one of the players moved close to her during the dance and thrust his hips in her face repeatedly. The student body roared with applause at the whole screen as admins and teachers approvingly looked on. In fact, the act was repeated many times over that year at booster events.
Increasingly administrators and teachers are making content choices that embrace a degraded culture and even run contrary to most student codes of conduct. For example, a recent high school play at my son’s school featured scenes that made comical reference to pornography and masturbation, made light of marital infidelity, and made sex before marriage the norm. Time and again I have watched as music directors and theater departments at high schools across the US pass up the vast quantity of quality wholesome musical and theatrical content in lieu of content that portrays immoral and risky sexual behavior and demean wholesome family relationships.
Parents who are bothered by these trends know just how common it is. A friend of mine felt the need to complain when the music teacher at his daughter’s school made an unbecoming song choice of "Don't tell mama" a song sung by Cabaret girls. Show choir students were encouraged to play the part of "bar hussies “and sing a risqué song while flaunting their stuff.
Increasingly administrators and teachers are making content choices that embrace a degraded culture and even run contrary to most student codes of conduct. For example, a recent high school play at my son’s school featured scenes that made comical reference to pornography and masturbation, made light of marital infidelity, and made sex before marriage the norm. Time and again I have watched as music directors and theater departments at high schools across the US pass up the vast quantity of quality wholesome musical and theatrical content in lieu of content that portrays immoral and risky sexual behavior and demean wholesome family relationships.
Parents who are bothered by these trends know just how common it is. A friend of mine felt the need to complain when the music teacher at his daughter’s school made an unbecoming song choice of "Don't tell mama" a song sung by Cabaret girls. Show choir students were encouraged to play the part of "bar hussies “and sing a risqué song while flaunting their stuff.
A high school near my home chose "Rent" as their high school musical which delves into drug abuse and portrays homosexuality. When parents complained about this choice the response from administrators was that it was not a good for students to be exposed to "real life". I hear this a lot, I also get this one; "it's no worse then the culture at large." A poor argument in my opinion it simply excuses poor behavior in our schools because the behavior in the culture is so bad. How do they think it gets that way, this is the next generation we are socializing after all.
In Nebraska, even the school board president's complaints about the choice held no sway over administrators. He said, “When we start asking them to depict in character a lifestyle in New York ... that deals in drugs, that deals in same-sex relations, that deals in provocative dress, I don't know that high school is the appropriate forum for that.” For my part, these things are not the kind of "real life" I am trying to build for my children, these things have no part in my "real life," and they certainly aren't the values and norms I want my children to build their future on.
This stuff starts innocently enough which prompts parents to ignore the problems. A parent contacted me one day disturbed by the choice of choreography in her child's choir concert. The middle school music teacher had the children wag their bottoms at the audience at the conclusion of a musical number. It was made worse by the fact that parents in the audience hooped and hollered, giving the students cat calls. The parent was disturbed that other parents in the room could not perceive the problem with teaching the students to use their bodies to get that kind of attention. Another parent had to complain when she discovered a teacher was using the "flip the bird" obscenity to teach students to hold their pencils correctly, a lesson plan that was repeated the following year despite the complaints of parents.
Social media has enabled this poor judgment to come to light on a scale that shouldn't be ignored. What school administrators continue to portray as isolated incidents many parents are coming to realize are common place. Inappropriate content sometimes comes to the classroom from curriculum published far from it, but this is no excuse. Socialization is a natural part of education, it is the way in which a society disseminates the norms, customs, and ideologies that are the means by which social and cultural continuity are attained. What norms and ideologies are educators disseminating to children today? The problems discussed in this series are not getting better, they are getting worse, and I believe it calls into serious doubt the idea that public school is a healthy place to socialize a child.
This stuff starts innocently enough which prompts parents to ignore the problems. A parent contacted me one day disturbed by the choice of choreography in her child's choir concert. The middle school music teacher had the children wag their bottoms at the audience at the conclusion of a musical number. It was made worse by the fact that parents in the audience hooped and hollered, giving the students cat calls. The parent was disturbed that other parents in the room could not perceive the problem with teaching the students to use their bodies to get that kind of attention. Another parent had to complain when she discovered a teacher was using the "flip the bird" obscenity to teach students to hold their pencils correctly, a lesson plan that was repeated the following year despite the complaints of parents.
Social media has enabled this poor judgment to come to light on a scale that shouldn't be ignored. What school administrators continue to portray as isolated incidents many parents are coming to realize are common place. Inappropriate content sometimes comes to the classroom from curriculum published far from it, but this is no excuse. Socialization is a natural part of education, it is the way in which a society disseminates the norms, customs, and ideologies that are the means by which social and cultural continuity are attained. What norms and ideologies are educators disseminating to children today? The problems discussed in this series are not getting better, they are getting worse, and I believe it calls into serious doubt the idea that public school is a healthy place to socialize a child.
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