During his weekly radio interview this morning with WOR’s John Gambling, Mayor Michael Bloomberg suggested that former US Supreme Court Justice Potter Stewart’s threshold test for pornography could be applied to bad teachers. (H/T Capital New York)
“You can’t prove that a teacher is not effective,” said the mayor. “But it’s like the Supreme Court, I forget which justice said it, he said, ‘You know, I can’t define pornography, but I know it when I see it.’ Well, same thing.”
In reply to Mayor Bloomberg, I say that the same may be said of the newly imposed sexuality education mandate in city schools. Using Justice Stewart’s ruling that community standards can prevail in the definition and regulation of pornography, I believe that the same common sense standard should apply regarding sex education. Parents, not the DoE – which is not a values neutral entity — should set community standards.
Only after the city-wide roll-out of its one-size-fits-all sexuality education program this month has the DOE told parents about what will be taught in their local schools.
Several NY news stories have exposed the inappropriate content accompanying the city’s new sex education mandate. The NY Post exposed a curriculum that refers students to a sexually-explicit website where lessons in sadomasochism, group sex, and bizarre sexual fetishes are taught.
Many New York parents want and prefer a sex education program which is free of the radical sexuality education agenda pushed by our secularist mayor. Teens need a curriculum which emphasizes abstinence as the healthiest choice and encourages adolescents to avoid and/or cease being sexually active.
As a supporter of liberty, like Justice Stewart, I advocate that students and parents be given the opportunity to “opt-in” or the choice of an abstinence-centered sex education instead of the ineffective comprehensive sexuality education curriculum now mandated by this mayor.
Justice Stewart would determine this to be a reasonable solution for reasonable people.
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