Dr. Grossman Speaks Out on Sex-Ed Controversy
By
KFBB News Team
Story Created:
Sep 1, 2010 at 7:10 PM MST
Story Updated:
Sep 1, 2010 at 7:10 PM MST
Six weeks ago a concerned grandmother from Helena emailed the author of “Your Teaching My Child What?” Dr. Miriam Grossman, about her concern over the Helena School District's proposed sex-ed curriculum. Grossman made a trip to the Treasure State today to address those concerns.
“The jist of my message is that the sexuality part of the curriculum and the hiv/aids portion of it is too much too soon and because it's too much too soon students are eventually going to pay for that…” says Dr. Miriam Grossman.
Over 400 concerned parents, grandparents, community members and activists came to Carroll College to hear that jist and the controversy surrounding sex-ed in Helena continues.
“I don't know when she expects young people to hear that? She's seeing them in college and they don't have any information and yet she doesn't believe that they should have information as they're growing up, ummm, i don't know when that magical moment is supposed to appear?” says Education Director for Planned Parenthood Montana Jill Baker.
Dangerous, misinformed and robbing children of their innocence - These are just some of the things that Dr. Miriam Grossman is saying about the Helena School District's proposed health curriculum.
Dr. Grossman also claims that the science in the document is from the last century and lacks vital information about human attatchment and the biological information that young women are more suspetible to STI/STD’s.
“It fails to give nonsense, unambiguous message about it. Now is every child or teenager going to delay sexual behavior? Of course not, the same way your child is not going to eat all their seven fruit and vegetables,” adds Grossman.
And the parents and activists that funded Dr. Grossman's presentation feel that sex should stay out of the schools.
“T think that that's something that should be left up to a parent to teach and i think the schools should stick to the a-b-c's and reading, writing and arithmetic,” says concerned parent Bruce Norum.
Yet, leaving it all up to the parents concerns some helath officials.
“Quite honestly, parents are sometimes very ill adept to be able to have conversations about sexual health issues and productive health issues because many of us did not get that information as young people so that's where the community and school can be of assistance,” adds Baker.
And with controversy comes a differing in opinions.
“Parents can't just automatically trust the authorities,” says Grossman.
“A times I thought she supported a good sex-education curriculum but other times she used some information to really kind of skew her perspective to a really conservative bent and I really felt that. The ultimate goal is to raise healthy adults, because that's my job as a parent is to raise a healthy adult and not keep them as babies forever,” says parent and supporter of the curriculum Stacey Anderson.
Dr. Grossman was unable to meet with the Helena School Board but Superintendent Bruce Messinger was set to attend this evening's presentation.
The Helena School District will meet again to announce final revisions to the curriculum on September 14th - ublic comment will be accepted on the 28th of this month and a final vote is set to take place on October 12th.
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