A school is getting flak from parents after students’ questions about sex education were made into an open forum that all students could read. The parents claim the subject matter is too advanced for seventh- and eighth-graders.
Lafayette Preparatory Academy in St. Louis, Mo. had students suggest things they wanted to discuss when it came to sexual education, according to KMOV4. The school then emailed the list of chosen topics to parents so they would know what was being discussed. Some parents said it was too explicit and wasn’t school material for students at that age.
“How has this become the new normal for this to be OK to be taught to our kids in school?” said Roxanne Taylor, a relative of a student at Lafayette Prep. “They don’t need to know this that soon. The world is already over-sexualized.”
The school said that the list consists of actual questions students submitted anonymously.
“It is a developmentally appropriate curriculum and typically the questions are developmentally appropriate,” said executive director Susan Marino. “These are the things kids are hearing about and seeing and we want to give them objective and matter-of-fact answers to the questions they have.”
One of the questions was, “if a woman has sex with two men in the same time period and becomes pregnant, does the baby have traits of both men?”
She says the whole school has a curriculum called O.W.L. which stands for “our whole lives.” It’s one that explores human development through the lens of changing bodies, growing up, and sexual health.
Topics are sent to parents the day before the class conversations. Marino said all parents are given a layout of the curriculum, including topics, at enrollment and parents have the option to not let their child be in the classroom while topics are discussed.
Taylor said that parents likely didn’t know how in-depth these classroom conversations would be.
“These were very intimate topics that we’re talking about and should be discussed between a parent and child, or an aunt or uncle, whomever is taking care of the child,” she said. “I feel like they stripped that away from the parent to be able to have these intimate conversations.”
