Last week our school district offered an informational meeting about the health classes they are now offering from pre-K through sixth grade. The company that’s done “the talk” classes for 5 & 6th grades is now contracted to started talking to every grade level.
We attended the meeting so that we knew what was going to be discussed at each grade level. I don’t know where the line is for us yet- if there will ever be a lesson where we don’t agree with the information presented. For their preK-3 curriculum, they are nowhere near that line.
In the preK- grade 3 curriculum, they cover bullying, being a friend, and a nutrition. They name body external body parts, and they name internal organs (non-reproductive). They talk about private parts being private, and what to do if someone makes you feel uncomfortable about your body. As the presenters were going over exactly what body parts were being named, the hands started going up.
Maybe it’s because we’ve always called body parts body parts, maybe it’s because I have a child of each gender, maybe I’m just all kinds of progressive, but I honestly didn’t see what the big deal was. They are introducing four words to the children, and I have a hard time believing that my children are the only two who will already know these words.(I’m not saying this words out loud here, due to creepers who search for such things for non-educational purposes).
People were asking how to opt out of the class because they didn’t want their children to know such things. My mouth hit the floor, Leilan told me to let it go, and I just listened. What I wanted to ask was, “Do you kids go to the bathroom?” “Have they ever been to a swimming pool?” “Do they have siblings or cousins of the opposite gender?” “What the hell do you tell your kid when he asks what ‘that’ is?”
When we left the meeting, we told the children about the class that they’d be having at their schools in the near future. We mentioned all the topics they’d be covering, and said there would be a lesson about the private parts of their bodies too. They were un-phased, and they only had one question- “What about the butt?”
(Which, oddly enough, didn’t come up, and isn’t one of the four body parts they’ll discussing.)