The Issue: The new sex-ed curriculum introduced by New York City’s Department of Education.
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With the city’s graduation rates in the sewer and only 25 percent of high-school graduates qualifying for college, why is Schools Chancellor Dennis Walcott wasting his time mandating sex classes for children in junior high (“XXXtracurricular Activity in School,” Andrea Peyser, Oct. 27)?
Does the Department of Education think that knowledge about oral sex and fetishes will make them college material because they can’t make it with reading and writing?
Jeffrey Rickey
Manalapan, NJ
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What should be included in this sex-ed curriculum is the understanding of what it costs to raise a child and, in the age of many methods of birth control, the responsibility of not having more children than one can afford.
As a taxpayer, I get incensed about having to pay for a child born to a single teenage parent who “didn’t know better,” “was a child him/herself,” “didn’t think you could get pregnant the first time” and all the other excuses that are inherent in ignorance.
Not to mention all the other taxpayer expenses involved in providing education, housing, food, job-training and health care for the teen-age parent.
Karen Bartis
West Hartford, Conn.
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I have been teaching Health and Sexuality education in New York City for 15 years.
The students, even in the sixth grade, are very knowledgeable and often participate in many of the acts Andrea Peyser refers to.
It is very important to give young people accurate information about reproduction and human sexuality.
After all, we are teaching about life, not “perv” material.
There is strong evidence to support the claim that early sexuality education reduces the rate of teen pregnancy.
Sheila Kaye
Manhattan
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Why would anyone be shocked to learn that the DOE wants to teach 11-year-olds how to use condoms?
I bet the very people in the Department of Education who are pushing this misguided idea send their kids to private school.
Gary Cella
Cos Cob, Conn.
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This is what happens when a bunch of misfit intellectual administrators gets together.
We are taking the innocence out of our children and are condoning a dysfunctional, liberal, confused society and lifestyle.
B. Thorne
Yonkers