In May 2023, Florida Governor Ron DeSantis (R) signed Florida House Bill 1069, a law that requires sex education classes in the state to conform to right-wing ideology.
The inclusion of critical race theory in a primer on sex ed is astounding for just how nakedly it exposes right-wing attempts to deny objective reality on all fronts. Systemic racism exists. Hormones exist. LGBTQIA+ people exist. Banning their mention from the curriculum doesn't change that.
Now Trump says everyone convicted of a crime should spend time behind bars. Will the corporate press ask if that includes crimes of business fraud, election interference, assault on Capitol police?
I would also want someone to ask him, or frankly Ron DeSantis, why Trump, the convicted felon, thinks he can vote on anything in Florida, let alone the abortion rights amendment.
Joan, I think you are reponding to the instant pick up of Judd's reporting on how Trump's pardons of truly dangerous criminals has led to more crime and even dangerous violent abuse against women. [Not Sex Ed's sorry state in Florida] I think we can credit Nicole Wallace for enlisting her husband, Michael Schmidt, reporter for The New York Times, for his appearance on her show with an intensive report on this issue. Then, Judd's following appearances on MSNBC. Hurray!
This quote from Isaac Asimov says it all. "There is a cult of ignorance in the United States, and there has always been. The strain of anti-intellectualism has been a constant thread winding its way through our political and cultural life, nurtured by the false notion that democracy means that "my ignorance is just as good as your knowledge." Florida shows what this means in practice. A knowledge-based curriculum can be filled in - in great detail. An ignorance-based curriculum is pretty much limited to a heading, with the content "not defined".
Right wingers have been demanding this bullshit since the Reagan era in spite of the reality that "abstinence only" sex ed results in high rates of teen pregnancy and STDs. Now to add the toxic stew of anti-LGBTQ ideology we can add teen suicide to the tragedy. And they refuse to admit that teenagers are, by nature, horny and curious, and that Billy Bob and Becky Sue will do more after church youth group than sip lemonade. When I lived in Colorado Springs, a notoriously holier than thou city, the Planned Parenthood clinic was always busy providing abortions and actual sex ed for Becky Sue after one of those encounters.
How sad that "the Sunshine State" has become so dark with all of this fear around sex! Imagine young teens gigging with anticipation about education about "SEX"! Now, kids, get out you copy of the "Constitution" and "The Bill of Rights"! And, then, watch the increasing boredom grow as the expert teaches them facts about human nature that they know in their being are false! However, try as he may, DeSantis won't be able to make young people give up their curiosity about sex.
The two Planned Parenthood affiliates in Florida administer Peer to Peer Education programs that train high school and college students to provide accurate information about sexual health and help guide their peers in making healthy decisions about their bodies and relationships.
They also offer programs to engage parents in the effort to help their children develop healthy, responsible attitudes and practices related to sex and reproduction.
Unitarian Universalist churches have similar programs.
Inevitably, Florida legislators and DeSantis will pass laws prohibiting any non-state agencies from providing accurate sex-ed information as well. Judd has reported many times about how expansive their efforts to create a new right wing society are.
Meanwhile, promiscuity and STDs rage in the senior community of the Villages. Solid Republicans.
I was a New York City high school student for 25 years. This stuff is crap. it is subjective and it is just plain misguided. First of all, race and sex aside, social emotional learning is a meaningful way to determine age and grade appropriateness. It is not a snowflake term meaning "people got feelings" but rather a measure of what and when a person is ready to learn something. Like the horse and water, you can bring the material to the student but it does not mean that 1.) they are fully ready to learn it or 2.) they don't know it already. One size cannot fit all 14 year olds.
What will show this wrong-way-driving of teaching sex education will be the teen pregnancies that will rise in Florida. We have evidence that when children are kept in the dark, they tend to crawl around until they figure it out for themselves.
Instead of regressing, sex education should be expanding and for older children, should include a discussion of pornography. (Wow, I just felt an entire state of prudish moms clutch their pearls.) If teens are not taught that pornography is male fantasy and, for the most part, degrading to women, they will learn their sex education from their phone, and they will learn that men hitting, slapping, pulling hair and name-calling toward women along with painful sex, is normal.
You go, Florida, you keep up that reputation for being a state of morons. Or, vote Democratic.
This is why it is important to read Project 2025. By reading it one will recognize how Florida is a Red state that is already implementing the initiatives in Project 2025, and can give us a taste what is going to happen nationwide under another Trump government. I assume this is part and parcel of the package that denies abortion. No sex ed and let the youth and perhaps many adults remain ignorant on pregnancy prevention while teaching abortion is a sin, and making it impossible to get anyway. Here is a Lincoln Project ad called State Line. https://youtu.be/3FGIyxhGkvo?si=uf8pBBjvwsFucbOz
Abortion is on the ballot in many states, and sex ed programs should be too. Florida is enacting Project 2025, but it is not just happening in Red States. In Blue states Catholic Health care is taking over many hospitals and preventing any abortion services for their patients, as the young woman in one video said about her doctor. Sex ed and access to abortion help to ensure that every child is a wanted child.
As someone who used to write statewide curriculum, I’m gobsmacked at the copy/paste garbage that the Florida Department of Education has paid someone to put together. Founding documents in sex ed? “Age appropriate” curriculum with no rubric? Are they just supposed to intuit what’s appropriate? Aside from the ridiculous focus on abstinence and the lack of understanding of gender theory, this is a joke. I wonder how much Florida taxpayers paid for this?
They think that if their patriotism vis a vis founding documents are thrown into the curriculum, it cannot be questioned. Let's go to Phys Ed and play Bill of Rights soccer or The Second Amendment football. How about some Article 1 slip and slide? I mean how constitutional is geometry? Let's put some Fifth Amendment into that French lesson!
Why are adults so chilish about sex? Maybe if sex wasn't treated like this we wouldnt have all this disgusting porn out there --as muchvof it is repressed and shame fueled reactivity. When will humans actually evolve emotionally? Geesh.
You are correct. If the class is filled with incorrect information the students will discover that they are being conned. The time spent in the class will have been wasted. The opportunity to educate squandered.
The inclusion of critical race theory in a primer on sex ed is astounding for just how nakedly it exposes right-wing attempts to deny objective reality on all fronts. Systemic racism exists. Hormones exist. LGBTQIA+ people exist. Banning their mention from the curriculum doesn't change that.
Only in the Sunshine State…And look what they did to my beautiful NewCollege!
Laws of nature to not apply to faith-breathing Christians.
Duh!!!
Now Trump says everyone convicted of a crime should spend time behind bars. Will the corporate press ask if that includes crimes of business fraud, election interference, assault on Capitol police?
I would also want someone to ask him, or frankly Ron DeSantis, why Trump, the convicted felon, thinks he can vote on anything in Florida, let alone the abortion rights amendment.
He can because the rules for felons voting apply to those of the state of NY, where he was convicted. I asked the same and that’s what Google told me.
Joan, I think you are reponding to the instant pick up of Judd's reporting on how Trump's pardons of truly dangerous criminals has led to more crime and even dangerous violent abuse against women. [Not Sex Ed's sorry state in Florida] I think we can credit Nicole Wallace for enlisting her husband, Michael Schmidt, reporter for The New York Times, for his appearance on her show with an intensive report on this issue. Then, Judd's following appearances on MSNBC. Hurray!
Looking forward to Trump's sentencing.
The corporate press only uses GOP talking points for questions.
My thoughts exactly. Somehow he will try to walk back that statement. Everyone who isn’t a cult leader?
What do you think? Have they so far?
This quote from Isaac Asimov says it all. "There is a cult of ignorance in the United States, and there has always been. The strain of anti-intellectualism has been a constant thread winding its way through our political and cultural life, nurtured by the false notion that democracy means that "my ignorance is just as good as your knowledge." Florida shows what this means in practice. A knowledge-based curriculum can be filled in - in great detail. An ignorance-based curriculum is pretty much limited to a heading, with the content "not defined".
We need to stop the premium on getting answers right in our schools (and at home) and encourage asking good questions, discussion, failure is OK.
I first ran across that quote in the 70's and thought it apropos but now? Even more so!
Well said.
Right wingers have been demanding this bullshit since the Reagan era in spite of the reality that "abstinence only" sex ed results in high rates of teen pregnancy and STDs. Now to add the toxic stew of anti-LGBTQ ideology we can add teen suicide to the tragedy. And they refuse to admit that teenagers are, by nature, horny and curious, and that Billy Bob and Becky Sue will do more after church youth group than sip lemonade. When I lived in Colorado Springs, a notoriously holier than thou city, the Planned Parenthood clinic was always busy providing abortions and actual sex ed for Becky Sue after one of those encounters.
There is never any shortage of Christian sanctimoniousness.
No room for gray, everything's black and white, right and wrong, why they get along so well with the authoritarians.
“Pleasantville” .
How sad that "the Sunshine State" has become so dark with all of this fear around sex! Imagine young teens gigging with anticipation about education about "SEX"! Now, kids, get out you copy of the "Constitution" and "The Bill of Rights"! And, then, watch the increasing boredom grow as the expert teaches them facts about human nature that they know in their being are false! However, try as he may, DeSantis won't be able to make young people give up their curiosity about sex.
It's just another form of control because these types can't handle the messiness of human life.
DeSantis and crew like Victor Orban.
Why wouldn’t group dating lead to group sex? That recommendation is just silly.
Put different races in the mix and watch heads explode!!!
And that ain't all that's gonna "splode!"
The two Planned Parenthood affiliates in Florida administer Peer to Peer Education programs that train high school and college students to provide accurate information about sexual health and help guide their peers in making healthy decisions about their bodies and relationships.
They also offer programs to engage parents in the effort to help their children develop healthy, responsible attitudes and practices related to sex and reproduction.
Unitarian Universalist churches have similar programs.
Inevitably, Florida legislators and DeSantis will pass laws prohibiting any non-state agencies from providing accurate sex-ed information as well. Judd has reported many times about how expansive their efforts to create a new right wing society are.
Meanwhile, promiscuity and STDs rage in the senior community of the Villages. Solid Republicans.
I was a New York City high school student for 25 years. This stuff is crap. it is subjective and it is just plain misguided. First of all, race and sex aside, social emotional learning is a meaningful way to determine age and grade appropriateness. It is not a snowflake term meaning "people got feelings" but rather a measure of what and when a person is ready to learn something. Like the horse and water, you can bring the material to the student but it does not mean that 1.) they are fully ready to learn it or 2.) they don't know it already. One size cannot fit all 14 year olds.
What will show this wrong-way-driving of teaching sex education will be the teen pregnancies that will rise in Florida. We have evidence that when children are kept in the dark, they tend to crawl around until they figure it out for themselves.
Instead of regressing, sex education should be expanding and for older children, should include a discussion of pornography. (Wow, I just felt an entire state of prudish moms clutch their pearls.) If teens are not taught that pornography is male fantasy and, for the most part, degrading to women, they will learn their sex education from their phone, and they will learn that men hitting, slapping, pulling hair and name-calling toward women along with painful sex, is normal.
You go, Florida, you keep up that reputation for being a state of morons. Or, vote Democratic.
Wow, I was a high school teacher for 25 years, not a student.
I figured as much but it still gave me a start.
Oh, and congrats on getting the NYT to do its job - reluctantly, I'm sure.
This is why it is important to read Project 2025. By reading it one will recognize how Florida is a Red state that is already implementing the initiatives in Project 2025, and can give us a taste what is going to happen nationwide under another Trump government. I assume this is part and parcel of the package that denies abortion. No sex ed and let the youth and perhaps many adults remain ignorant on pregnancy prevention while teaching abortion is a sin, and making it impossible to get anyway. Here is a Lincoln Project ad called State Line. https://youtu.be/3FGIyxhGkvo?si=uf8pBBjvwsFucbOz
NowThisImpact has several on abortion. This one is called Abortion is Not "Black and White' https://youtu.be/4diYfkTftXU?si=JAZ5_DnqGfckhMBN
This one is called, Kamala Harris, Keke Palmer Talk Black Maternal Mortality.
https://youtu.be/VEYMoxeluG8?si=mLrVk0T_qx72Y4yD
"Heartbeat Bills' Put Women's Health at Risk https://youtu.be/1L6v4r4jzIk?si=I40bzk3nCnTEDlPC
The Devastating Consequences of Texas' Abortion Laws
https://youtu.be/rvQnlwKdH78?si=bA7OEBIlIpx8vI-H
Woman Shares Her Experience With Getting and Abortion.
https://youtu.be/rvQnlwKdH78?si=bA7OEBIlIpx8vI-H
Pregnant Teen's Story Shows How Arkansas is Putting Patients at Risk
https://youtu.be/-pyG6SsAiOk?si=y3V07b48HphuU4Gi
Abortion is on the ballot in many states, and sex ed programs should be too. Florida is enacting Project 2025, but it is not just happening in Red States. In Blue states Catholic Health care is taking over many hospitals and preventing any abortion services for their patients, as the young woman in one video said about her doctor. Sex ed and access to abortion help to ensure that every child is a wanted child.
Frightening. Though difficult, Floridians will have to, among other efforts, march.
I think they will have to march to their polling places and vote.
As someone who used to write statewide curriculum, I’m gobsmacked at the copy/paste garbage that the Florida Department of Education has paid someone to put together. Founding documents in sex ed? “Age appropriate” curriculum with no rubric? Are they just supposed to intuit what’s appropriate? Aside from the ridiculous focus on abstinence and the lack of understanding of gender theory, this is a joke. I wonder how much Florida taxpayers paid for this?
They think that if their patriotism vis a vis founding documents are thrown into the curriculum, it cannot be questioned. Let's go to Phys Ed and play Bill of Rights soccer or The Second Amendment football. How about some Article 1 slip and slide? I mean how constitutional is geometry? Let's put some Fifth Amendment into that French lesson!
Keep on rattling those cages, Judd! Thank you for all you do to reveal the truth. Your work is so important!
Why are adults so chilish about sex? Maybe if sex wasn't treated like this we wouldnt have all this disgusting porn out there --as muchvof it is repressed and shame fueled reactivity. When will humans actually evolve emotionally? Geesh.
Most elected Republicans somehow end up committing sex crimes- they are obsessed with sex.
They cite principles of personal freedom in a document dictating just the opposite. Unreal
Par for the course with DeSantis. Make kids uneducated, pregnant early with no abortion rights to replace the kids he kills from gun violence.
OK, and next there will be a law requiring educators to state that the Earth is flat!
You are correct. If the class is filled with incorrect information the students will discover that they are being conned. The time spent in the class will have been wasted. The opportunity to educate squandered.
Teach the controversy!