A 42-year-old English teacher and cheerleading coach in Wythe County, Virginia has been indicted on four counts of carnal knowledge and one count of nonforcible sodomy. She also is charged with two counts of contributing to the delinquency of a 13-year-old boy.
A 48-year-old male former high school science teacher in Connecticut, who exchanged explicit e-mails with a student and then tried to meet her for a sexual rendezvous, was sentenced to 30 days in jail and five years’ probation.
These stories weren’t collected over a period of weeks or months. They all ran over a two-day span just last month, indicating how widespread teacher-student sex has become.
The rash of teacher-student sex would have been unheard of by those of us who were still in school twenty years ago, but it isn’t at all surprising given the length to which the National Education Association (NEA), educrats in many of America’s school systems, and other academics have striven to sexualize our youth.
To illustrate, at the NEA’s 2006 convention, the nation’s largest teachers union refused to pass an amendment designed to protect students against sexual misconduct by teachers. The amendment read “To protect the rights of all students, the Association believes sexual contact between education professionals and minor students is unacceptable.” The NEA refused to pass this amendment! The strongest language the NEA used with respect to teacher-student sex was that it is “unprofessional.”
Furthermore, among the resolutions the NEA adopted at this year’s convention were several that dealt with sexuality.
With respect to sex education, for example, the NEA “…believes that to facilitate the realization of human potential, it is the right of every individual to live in an environment of freely available information and knowledge about sexuality and encourages affiliates and members to support appropriately established sex education programs. Such programs should include information on sexual abstinence, birth control and family planning, diversity of culture, diversity of sexual orientation and gender identification, parenting skills, prenatal care, sexually transmitted diseases, incest, sexual abuse, sexual harassment, homophobia, the effects of substance abuse during pregnancy, and problems associated with and resulting from pre-teen and teenage pregnancies.”
To add to this, if you recall, the Ninth U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals issued a fallacious ruling last year that “there is no fundamental right of parents to be the exclusive provider of information regarding sexual matters to their children” and that “parents have no due process or privacy right to override the determinations of public schools as to the information to which their children will be exposed while enrolled as students.”
Sex education and other values-based instruction belong in the home. It is the duty of parents to instruct their children in these matters — not school teachers. However, if we absolutely must have sex education in school, then the best instruction that can be given is that abstinence indisputably works every time it’s tried. Unfortunately, abstinence-only sex education is often met with ridicule by academic elites (smartest-person-in-the-room types) more than rank-and-file parents.
For example, Linda Klepacki, analyst for sexual health at Focus on the Family, relates her experience at the 2006 National STD Prevention Conference that was presented by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (a federal agency).
“In the opening minutes, this ’scientific’ gathering began the attack upon those of us who believe in conservative values and God. Dr. Sander Gilman of Emory University started us down the liberal highway with his opening plenary session. He said results from the abstinence-based True Love Waits campaign have been ‘catastrophic’ (lie). He went on to smear the very idea of abstinence education and marriage. He mockingly stated that conservatives think there are only two ways to prevent STDs — abstinence and the marriage bed. And then he sarcastically sneered, ‘Because humans never lie.’ He continued saying that the celibacy movement is a false intervention (lie) and that abstinence is the most controversial issue in our field today.”
This is, unfortunately, how most liberals in the education establishment view abstinence. Is it any wonder, then, that a growing number of teachers at high schools and even middle schools have become sexual predators? It shouldn’t when one considers the efforts that have been made to sexualize our youth. The cynical “rationale” is that kids are going to have sex anyway, so we might as well teach them how to use condoms.
Whether or not kids engage in sex, to the chagrin of the NEA and other elites in the education system, has a lot to do with how they are raised. Parents who take a great interest in their kids’ lives and monitor their friends and activities have a better-than-average chance of becoming adults with their virginity intact, even though they must swim upstream against a culture that barrages them with sex. Given that so many schools teach values that counter the wishes of parents, is it any wonder that homeschools and Christian academies are flourishing?
For those of you who don’t follow the NBA, the Memphis Grizzlies have had pretty good success, having reached the playoffs the last two years. Last year, they had a franchise-best 49 wins (against 33 losses). But the 2006-2007 team has produced only a loud thud, with the Grizzlies posting an NBA-worst 6-24 record. The Grizzlies are the NBA equivalent of what the Tennessee Titans were at 0-5 — hapless, helpless, and hopeless.
My question is, how do you go from 49-33 to 6-24 without any major personnel changes? I wish I knew. True, the Grizzlies star forward, Pau Gasol, missed the first 22 games of this season with a foot injury. But the Grizzlies have been so well balanced that one player shouldn’t make that great a difference. He’s been injured before and the team has played through it. Last year’s starting center Lorenzen Wright is gone, which is no great loss, and his vacancy has been more than adequately filled by Stromile Swift and Jake Tsakalidis. Last year’s starter Shane Battier is gone, but we’ve got Rudy Gay filling those shoes. On the other hand, starting point guard Damon Stoudamire, who was injured most of last year, is back in the starting lineup this year.
