Friday, June 17, 2011

Incompetent or Evil? You Make the Call...

PISSED sent me this gem from my old stompin' ground:

School Surveys 7th-Graders on Oral Sex
A middle school in Massachusetts is under fire for requiring children to complete a graphic sex survey -- without parental knowledge or consent -- that included questions about sexual partners and oral sex.

The Rutherford Institute, a civil liberties organization, filed a complaint with the U.S. Dept. of Education against the Fitchburg School Committee. They are representing the two middle school-aged daughters of Arlene Tessitore.
The questionnaire had questions about drug use, suicide attempts, sexual conduct and other adult matter - and was distributed to seventh graders.

Are you ready for the school's defense?
Principal Fran Thomas told Fox News Radio that students were indeed given the survey – and admits it was graphic. But Thomas said the school has nothing to do with the content and they were required to administer the survey to fulfill a grant requirement.

“I can take no responsibility for what’s on that survey,” Thomas said. “It’s not generated by the school system.”
[deep breath] Sorry about the following language folks, this hits a little too close to home for me.

BULL. FUCKING. SHIT.

YOU distributed this survey in YOUR school. YOU MOST FUCKING CERTAINLY ARE RESPONSIBLE FOR THAT SURVEY. Look, I've dealt with my kids' school on *many* occasions dealing with distributing material to the students, for both the PTA and the Cub Scouts. You have to submit whatever it is you want distributed to the district office for approval two weeks ahead of distribution so the school has ample time to review.

This principal is either grossly incompetent and should be removed from her job or she is lying through her teeth. I find it beyond the realm of credibility that the school would be presented with a sealed survey with no option to review before distribution. Even if this is exactly what happened, any educator worth a warm bucket of piss should have refused on principle - that you're not about to hand a bunch of 12 year old kids ANYTHING without reviewing it first.

Incompetence or malevolence are the choices here, and neither are very appealing.

That is all.

18 comments:

ASM826 said...

And what did they do with the results? Where are the answers, individual and collated?

I remember taking a survey like this, in high school in 1976. They put us in the auditorium and handed out a detailed questionnaire. Looking back, it was clearly a study for some university project.

Dragon said...

+1 Jay...

Its things like this that made us decide to Homeschool. Sure, its a huge sacrifice, as one of the two breadwinners ain't winning no more bread and your taxes are still paying for the crappy public school system, but YOU get to control what YOUR kid learns.

Best decision the missus and I have ever made.

WV: flogynat.....WTF?

Peripatetic Engineer said...

What organization required that they complete the survey in order to get the grant? That's the key question?

What can be next if school administrators are willing to compel students to takw a survey without reading the thing or knowing how it will be used? Looks like it time to pluck a chicken and start heating up the tar barrel.

Butch Cassidy said...

Having exited the public school system just a few years ago, I can say that this happens in just about every school in New Hampshire.

I would always mark down the most grossly hedonistic answers available and doodle scenes described by the questions all over the packets. After a while, I was asked to just sit the tests out and read or something.

Bubblehead Les. said...

So if an individual stops a 7th. Grader on the street and asks the youngster Questions about Sex, that Adult can be arrested for a Sex Crime. But if a School District whores itself out to get Grant Money by forcing the students to take the same Quiz, it's Education?

Sure this isn't the old joke about "we know what kind of person you are, we're just negotiating over prices?"

Anonymous said...

Yet another reason our soon to be 9th grade daughter will be moving from public school to private Christian school this year. I am sick to death of the public school crap, stuff just like this. They claim their hands are tied. Our biggest complaint is how they dummy down our kids, we've been told on too many occasions that we have to understand that classes move at the pace of the slowest kids! We've encountered several principals that were afraid to do their jobs.

Borepatch said...

I hope that someone points out (at a school board meeting, hopefully) that students learn leadership and responsibility from watching their teachers and school administrators.

And the lack of leadership and responsibility.

Dirk said...

I've got a 12-year-old daughter who will be in 7th grade in the fall. Let me just say that if I got wind of such a survey being handed to her, there would absolutely be a lawsuit in the works about 15 nanoseconds later, and I know the parents of dozens of her friends who would be doing the same thing. My 12-year-old does not need to be exposed to this kind of thing, not like this, not in a school setting.

Eck! said...

Asking questions is one thing, the reason is quite another. Whoring for grants over sexual material without review is just bad science and worse social morals on the part of the schools.

There is ALWAYS the right of refusal,
there may be consequences as a result
BUT, responsibility has that cost.
Being responsible takes work and sometimes a bit of good old fashioned
courage. That "principle" and all
subordinates need to grow a set!

For not being responsible then need a
severe punishment, like unemployment.

Eck!

Mark Alger said...

If he doesn't bear responsibility for the content of a survey distributed in and by his school, then he hasn't the authority to demand your children's attendance. Either the schools are in loco parentis or they're not. Can't have it both ways.

M

TW: gonuff -- enough with the goniff

Mark Alger said...

And (staircase wit) how is it not child prostitution to whore out your students in order to make a little cash?

M

Teke said...

That's why my kids go to private school.

It also falls under the category of:
They are whores and will do anything for more funding. and
We really don't care about teaching the children

Anonymous said...

Don't need no stink'n survey, just wait for the yearbook to come out......... http://news.yahoo.com/s/nm/20110617/us_nm/us_yearbook_photo

Anonymous said...

http://news.yahoo.com
/s/nm/20110617/us_nm/us_yearbook_photo

TOTWTYTR said...

This sort of shit has been going on for a long time. It's most often tied to federal money, or grants, or some other financial incentive.

As far back as the early 1960s my father refused to fill out these forms. The first ones were so that the school system in my middle class community could apply for federal funds for free lunches.

As I recall, they asked about number of members of the family, annual income, and other data that my father, fierce individualist that he was, refused to share. He would put a giant X through the form, hand it back to me and tell me to turn it in. I did and as far as I know, nothing ever came of it.

Of course today, no doubt we'd be visited by DSS and I'd be refused entry to the school.

It's even worse now. Thankfully my kids are several years removed from the public school system. As I said to my wife when our daughter was graduating from HS, if I had it to do all over again, I'd have found a way to get them into private schools after the fifth or sixth grade.

Stretch said...

Survey is probably a recruiting data base for Congressional pages and White House interns.

OK, so I'm a cynic.

Tell the children that faking answers gets the school administrators in trouble with "their bosses" and I guarantee the results will be skewed toward Full Clinton.

Bill Nance said...

Ya, 12-year-olds have NEVER had oral sex or known anyone who's attempted to hurt themselves...

You're living in a dreamworld Jay, this isn't 1950.

Girls average menarche at 11-12! 50 years ago that was closer to 15! They are assaulted non-stop by sexualized TV, music, ads, you name it. Much of it passing without comment by parents as they watch soap operas etc.

Soaps especially portray the most immoral, selfish and irresponsible sex on TV by a long shot. You could take your 10 year old to R-rated movies every week for a year and not touch the sick moral messages of Days of Our Lives.

We have more STDs, teen pregnancies and bastards than the countries who have sex-ed that would have most parents in this country having apoplexy.

But it works. We do it in this country too, but it's not available in the public schools. No, instead of that we teach abstinence only and similar nonsense that's been demonstrated to have a direct causal effect on increases in teen pregnancy.

Maybe instead of getting worked up over this nonsense you could get active in having your school actually teach honest sex ed, not the watered down ridiculousness which passes for it in the USA.

What's given helps no one because it lacks the critical information and non-judgmental atmosphere that gets kids to *think* about stuff instead of ignore it...

But hey, what do I know, I've only been teaching this stuff to teens through the Unitarian Church for 20 years. -And TWO pregnancies in that time. TWO. Name me a "health" teacher in a public school who can say that and I'll eat every shoe in your closet.

Daniel in Brookline said...

Bill:

So kids are going to be exposed to this stuff anyway... THIS is your argument? Do you seriously advance this as a MORAL standpoint?

It's a lot harder today to teach kids about sexuality and responsibility, yes, because they see irresponsibility all around them, from our elected leaders on up. It's also a lot harder to protect them from things that are truly not age-appropriate, because our culture is saturated with it. That does NOT mean that the effort is impossible, or not worthwhile.

There's a big difference between age-appropriate sex ed, and forcing seventh-graders to answer questions about oral sex without their parents' knowledge or consent. (The public school my girls go to requires a parental consent form before the kids can be taken out for pizza!)

Oh, and by the way -- I congratulate you on your (apparently) good results from twenty years of teaching teens through the Unitarian Church. But isn't that a self-selecting population by definition? Given that public schools don't have that luxury, comparing yourself to them doesn't impress me much.