The Norfolk Public Schools Board of Education is scheduled to discuss implementing the controversial “Get Real” sex education curriculum, authored by Planned Parenthood in Massachusetts in 2014, during a work session meeting Wednesday, according to the district.
A meeting agenda lists the proposed curriculum discussion as part of its Family Life Education program.
According to Planned Parenthood, the “Get Real: Comprehensive Sex Education That Works” curriculum “is a comprehensive sexuality education curriculum designed for middle and high school aged youth. It is available as a curriculum package that includes teacher training and support as well as family activities.”
The organization said the lessons deliver “accurate, age-appropriate information on sex and sexuality and emphasizes healthy relationship skills.”
While the organization touts a three-year impact study of the curriculum that it said shows a drop in risky sexual behavior by students that completed it, parents and others complain the curriculum is “too explicit” in some details about sexual activity and the way it defines terms such as gender identity, gender expression, and transgender, to middle and high school students.
“Children at this age are in their shy development stage, and when you encourage them out of this normal development, and you force them into the next level, before they are mentally prepared, you’ve disrupted the normal growth of a child,” Sylvia Bryant, a Virginia parent who has had multiple children educated in the Norfolk public school system since 1995, told FOX News. “Innocence is what makes a child a child. And when you take the innocence of a child away, you cannot put it back. You cannot give it back.”
According to the report, Bryant is also concerned that the curriculum encourages students to “find up to three people to make a talk to about sex and sexuality,” and this shows teachers going around parents to discuss such issues, and they have “overstepped their boundaries.”
The district said in a presentation that it conducted a voluntary pilot program with the curriculum in the 2020-21 school year with 255 middle school students and 153 high school students, with parents approving their participation.
It then surveyed the parents who reviewed the materials and lessons, receiving 202 responses that found them “excellent” and “strongly supported” enacting the program fully in the district’s schools.
The survey found 87% of students approving of the curriculum, saying they would recommend it to other students.
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