In case you missed it:
The venerable San Francisco-based 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals agreed with a lower court's ruling that parents had no right to object to questions posed to their children on a "psychological survey". "Schools cannot be expected to accommodate the personal, moral or religious concerns of every parent," Judge Stephen Reinhardt wrote for the panel. "Such an obligation would not only contravene the educational mission of the public schools, but also would be impossible to satisfy"
The following questions were on the survey, and added only after the questionnaire had been sent to parents beforehand. The parents of students as young as seven years old, had no prior knowledge that these questions were going to be asked:
students were to rate the following activities as to how often they think about them (often, rarely, etc.)
8. Touching my private parts too much
17. Thinking about having sex
22. Thinking about touching other people’s private parts
23. Thinking about sex when I don’t want to
26. Washing myself because I feel dirty on the inside
34. Not trusting people because they might want sex
40. Getting scared or upset when I think about sex
44. Having sex feelings in my body
47. Can’t stop thinking about sex
54. Getting upset when people talk about sex
As the parent of a soon-to-be seven year old, the idea that my daughter (who would be unable to answer most of the questions above due to naivety) would be confronted with this subject without my foreknowledge is outrageous and maddening. As maddening though is the courts opinion, which includes;
"In summary, we hold that there is no free-standing fundamental right of parents 'to control the upbringing of their children by introducing them to matters of and relating to sex in accordance with their personal and religious values and beliefs' and that the asserted right is not encompassed by any other fundamental right. In doing so, we do not quarrel with the parents’ right to inform and advise their children about the subject of sex as they see fit. We conclude only that the parents are possessed of no constitutional right to prevent the public schools from providing information on that subject to their students in any forum or manner they select."
They are worried about contravening the educational mission of the schools? So am I. So am I.
