Public schools: parental influence, what should be taught?

[flowerseverywhere]

That's true, but responsible parents can take steps to control their children's access to adult content on the internet and TV. It gets a bit harder to control in some public school districts where parents concerns are ignored.

Responsible parents try to. Once a child is out of the home, playing with other kids or in their homes, it is tremendously difficult to monitor the speech and images they are exposed to. I'm not saying give up on it, but parents must be aware that there are bigger boogeyman out there than the very large majority of teachers who are trying to teach kids. Plus if they ban books, they should ban all mention of any religious holiday. Parental rights and all.

[flowerseverywhere]

I read they were replacing standardized testing with something called progress monitoring testing. Not sure what the difference is.

It is supposed to be short computer testing (even on computer for the kindergardeners) three times a year. The teachers association does not like it. I suspect it costs less.

Here is the best of all. You only need a high school education or equivalent to substitute teach. Plus pass a criminal test. I am far more concerned about someone off the street with no formal teacher training or experience not even realizing what is inappropriate in a classroom. And $65 a day for a HS diploma sub is not much incentive to worry about it.

[ToomuchStuff]

That's true, but responsible parents can take steps to control their children's access to adult content on the internet and TV. It gets a bit harder to control in some public school districts where parents concerns are ignored.

At their own homes. Outside of their own homes, from friends houses, to stores with tv's on and free internet access, etc. etc. etc. They can't really do much.
And it only gets worse if the kids are actively seeking out ways of finding out things.

I don't know about the experiences of others who came of age in the 50s and 60s but I know there was always a black cloud of fear of pregnancy that permeated female adolescence at that time. There was no reliable birth control, and there was tremendous shame over getting pregnant--your only two choices were get shipped off to "relatives" for 9 months or have a shotgun wedding before you started to show.

Given those circumstances, I can almost understand why parents and teachers (especially parochial teachers) tended to put the fear of the devil in you. We've come a long way.

You want to put fear in them, you need to go from my childhood. Instead of explaining sex at a younger age (waited for the schools to go over fundamentals), their fear about a relative being a sexual predator, was instead connected to (think of the worst person you know and what they did), a serial killer. By the time puberty hit and I understood sex, a wet dream involved being vivisected while trying to keep the perp occupied, so the gal had a better chance of getting away.


Parents went from not letting us play outside when they weren't home (after I was abducted out of the back yard, when they WERE home), to instead letting us run free in stores *where it was "safe", pre Adam alerts*, and taking me to a place where the only place I was interested in, had pocket knives from his victims, as well as their skulls. (local serial killer)

It should be much less about "protections" and more about teaching values and why we value x or y.

[ApatheticNoMore]

But the most important point is why do people think we need laws like this?

reading the laws they almost just seem like parental tyranny. I mean it forbids discussions of mental and physical health without the parent having a right to be informed or something. I mean maybe someone thinks that means sex or transsexuality and it could, but couldn't it be just discussing why the child comes to school with unexplained bruises and so on? I mean discussing family abuse is a discussion of mental and physical health. Rights of the parent? Ok but if we are getting into that don't we need to consider rights of the child? Because, no they are not adults, nor infinitely wise, but it doesn't mean they shouldn't have some rights and protections (from abuse absolutely - and however many QAnon nuts think this happens mostly in schools, a bit here and there, but no, it happens mostly in families).

[JaneV2.0]

"and however many QAnon nuts think this happens mostly in schools, a bit here and there, but no, it happens mostly in families)."

Exactly, although QAnon seems impervious to reason, by design. They've revived the idea of blood libel https://encyclopedia.ushmm.org/conte...le/blood-libel , and are undermining their dupes' faith in any authority but theirs--a classic tactic.