Kondomz For Kidz
Relax...this is not the name of a new retail outlet, although, it may not be long. As nearly everyone knows by now, last week in Portland, Maine, the Portland School Committee voted 7-2 to make King Middle School the first middle school in Maine to offer a "full range" of contraception available to students in grades 6 through 8. For those not versed in, or past, those parenting years, this encompasses children from 11 to 13 years old.
It's hard to know where to begin with this story. As a father of 5 children, two of whom are currently 11 and 10 years old, it is a mortifying thought that they would be sexually active, and, equally so, that their school would be involved in offering them contraception. It is hard to decide which angers me more, a school committee that is so out of touch with traditional moral values, or a community which has taken this news sitting down, with virtually no sign of any public outrage. I am becoming more and more accustomed to the state of stunned disbelief that I fall into after reading a story like this. There are so many now. The secular progressives, the "enlightened", those high-level thinkers who are so far ahead of the rest of us that they snicker when they see folks like me who recoil at the implementation of such ridiculous policies.
Sarah Thompson, mother of an eighth-grader and one of the committee members that voted in favor, said the policy made her "uncomfortable", but felt it was the right thing to do. The thinking is, there are some kids who are sexually active at this age, there have been some pregnancies, so isn't this the right course of action? In that case, why not put mattresses in the classrooms, maybe a heart-shaped bed with mirrors on the ceilings because, hey, some kids are "doing it". Portland becomes this week's microcosm of America-at-large. When problems become to hard to deal with, just give in. Violence in the schools? Bullet-proof backpacks. Children having sex at younger and younger ages? Birth-control vending machines. For those of us left with any traditional family values this is obscene. "It's very rare that middle schools do this," says Divya Mohan, a spokeswoman for the National Assembly on School-Based Health Care. And Portland is not talking about simply handing out condoms. This is full range, birth-control prescriptions...the pill, the patch, the full array of what is available. There was but one lone voice in the Maine wilderness that displayed any reason at all. Diane Miller said she felt the plan was a violation of religion. "We are dealing with children...I am just horrified at the suggestion."
Once a parent signs the consent form for their child to be "treated" at the school health center, everything from that point forward is confidential. Richard Veilleux, like Diane Miller, was against it. "This is encouraging kids to have sex". But it's worse than that, it also sends a message to the public at large, including predators and pedophiles, that this age group is on the market. It is a deplorable message in every conceivable way. It devalues and speaks poorly of our collective parenting skills, jeopardizes the children who have been raised properly, and generally waves a white flag to the fight against the "anything-goes crowd. During the 2006-07 school year at King Middle school, only 5 of the 134 students who visited the health center reported being sexually active. For this percentage, we tip everything upside down and make a radical policy change? It is pure nonsense, but it is dangerous nonsense, because it's coming to a school near you and you can count on it.
I considered all this the other night while reading to my 11 year old before bed. We were reading "How to Break the Dragon's Curse", one of a series of children's books about child vikings and their little pet dragons. I thought about how this age of transition from child, to boy, to young man is so fraught with peril and a period that can be trying for parents. On one occasion I might be having a discussion about sports, or school, and I think about how my son is growing up and our relationship changes. Next thing you know you're reading "Horton Hatches an Egg" and you realize that the "little kid" is still in there, hanging on. The day that I hear that some school official has intervened on how we raise our children, or is offering birth control to my chldren, will be the day that I walk straight through a brick wall at our Middle School for a one-on-one conference. Please, let my children have their childhood, let them be goofy kids and grow up in harmony with the natural pace of things.
The real answer to children having sex, the difficult solution of course, is a return to family values. Whole families actually parenting their children. Are there going to be young kids having sex? Sure, always has and always will, but the thought that the answer is for the rest of us to fold just drives me crazy. The scariest thing about what happened in Portland, Maine is not so much the actions of an intellectually vapid school committee, it was the nearly complete absence of any dissenting viewpoints. Where is the public outrage? Halloween came early this year, with more "trick" than "treat".
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