Thursday, July 19, 2007

Obama and Kindergarteners

There’s a story filtering around the conservative side of things that Barack Obama wants “sex education” for kindergarteners.  I saw this here, and from the article, it sounds like this is far less of a big deal than the right makes it out to be.

Obama clarified:

      'Nobody's suggesting that kindergartners are going to be getting information about sex in the way that we think about it,' Obama said. 'If they ask a teacher 'where do babies come from,' that providing information that the fact is that it's not a stork is probably not an unhealthy thing. Although again, that's going to be determined on a case by case basis by local communities and local school boards.'

Also he mentioned things like teaching about “inappropriate touching” and the like.  And so if that’s the type of thing he’s talking about it’s less serious that what you would normally think of when you hear the phrase “sex education.” 

However, I don’t see the point here.  It’s an unfortunate circumstance that in this day and age kids aren’t getting appropriate answers to their questions and so the school feels like it needs to step in.  However I still don’t think this is the schools job.  It’s the parents job.  I also think that it’s stupid to think that teachers don’t already have the latitude to answer a kindergartener’s questions about where babies come from by telling them that they come from their “mother’s belly.”  Teachers should restrict touching in class as well, and discipline the kids when they need to, but a formal education on the subject?

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