More on Portland’s King Middle School

When I first became aware of what decision the Portland School Board was about to make, I was rather incensed that authority figures that are supposed to act in loco parentis would go for it – providing birth control (pills, patches, condoms) to 11 – 13 year olds. Being under the age of consent in Maine, effectively setting the stage to make it easier for statutory rape to occur without the threat of pregnancy.  Morally I find this repugnant.  So, if something "goes wrong" later on (indeed, a pregnancy or possible heightened cancer risks from the hormonal changes in these kids where puberty may have just started – or not), can the employees or School Board be held responsible?

Nope – they cannot be held accountable for any adverse reactions in the future under law.  And not being their kids, who cares what the long term results might be?

What I found rather sad was this additional information:

One might presume that since the Portland school district folks have found the time to focus on giving 11-year olds birth control pills without parental consent, the schools already have achieved a 100 percent success rate in meeting academic standards. Wrong.

As the Portland, Maine education gurus are pushing condoms, pills, skin patches and implants onto middle school kids, more than half of its eighth graders — some 57 percent to be precise — either do not meet or only partially meet state standards for reading. Those same middle schoolers fare even worse in math and science — with 71 percent of eighth graders failing to meet, or only meeting in part, math standards; a figure that rises to 85 percent for science subjects. You get the picture. Portland’s middle school students may not be able to read or do math real well, but they’ll be able to tell you all about condoms and birth control pills.

It doesn’t get much better for Maine’s students after they leave middle school and take on the challenges presented them in the state’s high schools. The Pine Tree State’s SAT ranking is as bad as it can get. Maine is dead last (three places even below Georgia) in a list of all 50 states showing how their students scored on the SAT. One might suppose that if the "SAT" stood for "Sex Aptitude Test" rather than "Scholastic Aptitude Test," Maine might rank considerably higher. However, that would hardly be a foregone conclusion. Despite the attention and resources devoted by "educators" in Maine and in other states to sex education, research indicates no correlation between dispensing birth control to students and greater use of contraceptives by those students. In other words, you can lead a horse to water, but you can’t make him wear it; or perhaps I have mixed metaphors.

Here in my local town, I got a tad upset when the then School Board Chairman floated the idea of spending hundreds of thousands of dollars even as the high school was in the NCLB status of "in need of improvement" – once again, concentrating on other than academics (the school has since earned its way off the list).

Root cause?  A shift from teaching the fundamentals to being more concerned and paying attention to "social justice" and a loosening of the moral atmosphere that once was the norm. 

Responsible party?  I blame the generation of which I am a part – the Boomers.  While every generation has its "young adult" angst and rebellion, some seemingly never matured sufficiently enough to understand moderation can be good.  Instead, those that were willing to throw tradition (and by association, that which worked).  Sure, many will say "Skip, times change!".  However, as many offer that, the thought is that we as a generation have allowed it to happen.  To blame "it changes" is intellectually lazy at best, dishonest at worst.  While many changes can and are good, many just allow themselves to just drift down the river of change, never bother to try to calculate the outcomes.

Remedy?  Stop worrying about taking over the role of parents entirely and go back to teaching the basics.  Yes, there are, and always will be, parents that don’t live and act up to their responsibility.  But it should the role of the educational establishment to completely warp things for the extremely few (in this situation).  But that is no reason at all to discard the major raison d’etre for education – passing down the basics to the next generation.

And then the educational complex complains as parents choose alternatives: homeschooling, charter schools, private schools, parochial schools.

Where they have the power to decide for their children, not government.