In an attempt to have “kids get better” sex education in public schools and give parents “flexibility” in how their children learn about sex, Rep. Justin Fawson brings the 2018 Legislature HB286.
His goals may be laudable, but rarely is sex education in schools a noncontroversial issue, especially in a legislative election year.
Fawson’s bill does a number of things, detailed below.
But a significant change is that he sets up a parent committee at the State School Board level that would recommend, along with state curriculum experts, what kind of sex ed is taught in junior and high schools.
There is no such parent committee now, although there are curriculum review boards.
In HB286, key to the eight sex ed “modules,” or class topics, is that they be electronic based – allowing students/parents to decide whether they want to take those classes in health classes with other students or at home on their computers/tablets in a more private setting.
Parents could then review the modules before their kids see them, and decide not to have their children view one or more of the modules, teach the topics of those modules to their children themselves in the home.
Also, Fawson would add a new module to the curriculum: What he calls the “anti-porn” class.
It would be up to the state parents’ committee exactly what kind of pictures may appear in that “anti-porn” section.
As he puts it, “the good or bad pictures.”
He doesn’t propose to tell the parent committee what those pictures should or should not be, for example, human genitals and how they interact in sex.
Here are some of new or revised sex education points in HB286:
Instead of “human sexuality” there will be classes on “reproductive health.” The difference, says Fawson, is a general idea of taking emotion out of sex education.
“We want to move more to a science-based, health-based,” sex ed model, he said.
Parents who are not comfortable with their children learning about sex in a health class in school, to have the option of teaching their own children what they want them to learn at home, on the computer, using the same “modules” that would be taught in the classroom as a reference.
Every two years data on sex ed-related topics, like teen pregnancies, will be updated and used in the electronic courses.
There is a new state sex ed course review committee, which will in effect be a parent review committee through its membership.
Anti-child sex abuse classes, now being taught in other areas, are moved into the general sex-ed statute, bringing more continuity to teaching about that real problem in public schooling.
“I believe this multi-prong, overall” reform is needed and will provide for better human reproductive education, said Fawson.
