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Can I opt-out? What about alternate classes?
Yes, you can definitely opt-out. Actually, the classes are opt-in; your child will not be allowed to attend unless you return the permission slip. The two new controversial health classes are taught in eighth and tenth grade.
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The eighth grade sexual orientation lessons are taught as two forty-five minute sessions during a four week Family Life and Human Sexuality Curriculum. In order to opt-out from the two forty-five minute sessions, you need to remove your child from the entire four weeks of family life instruction. Alternative Lessons for eighth grade are offered, as mandated by Maryland State law. |
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The tenth grade sexual orientation lessons are taught as two forty-five minute sessions during a four week Family Life Curriculum. The condom video is presented during a forty-five minute session during the two weeks of instruction on Sexually Transmitted Diseases. In order to opt-out from the two forty-five minute sessions on Family Life, you need to remove your child from the entire four weeks of family life instruction. Alternative lessons to 10th grade Family Life are offered. In order to opt-out from the forty-five minute condom video, you need to remove your child from the entire two weeks of STD instruction. Alternative Lessons for tenth grade STD instruction are offered. |
Some parents are asking for their child to receive the Family Life and Human Sexuality Curriculum without receiving the two lessons on sexual orientation.
CRC suggests that parents write on the permission slip:
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I give permission for my child to take the Family Life and Human Sexuality Unit WITHOUT the two classes on Sexual Orientation. |
Note, if 10 students per school OPT-OUT of the program, MCPS is forced to assign a teacher and a classroom to the alternative lessons. By opting-in, you are giving your tacit approval of the curriculum, and the school system will tout that “most Montgomery County Parents are happy the school system is being progressive”. And note, it won’t stop with just this curriculum – there are examples across the country of parental rights violations by the public school systems. Overseas, Germany has threatened to take the children of homeschoolers who refuse to send them to public schools (which now encourage kindergarteners to lay in the dark and touch each other). Indeed, the Maryland Board of Education, when denying CRC’s appeal, stated “It is, of course, the fundamental right of a parent to control the upbringing of his/her child, but that right is not absolute. It must bend to the state’s duty to educate its citizens”.
If you are morally opposed to this curriculum and let your child participate anyway, under a misguided impression that you will be able to teach them differently or because you are “afraid they will be stigmatized”, you are doing a disservice not only to your child, but to parents and children across the nation.
This new Montgomery County curriculum is the most liberal in the nation – with the possible exception of Los Angeles. If it succeeds here, gay activists will propagate it. You are in the middle of a national battle for the hearts and minds of our children – and the culture of our society.
Parent wanting to opt-out are NOT in the minority:
Montgomery County's new curricula, "Respect for Differences in Human Sexuality," is so controversial, it has received national media attention for three years. On August 15, 2007 The New York Times reported "opponents of the new curriculum, portrayed as a vocal minority by school officials, may be more in sync with the mood of parents nationally. According to a 2004 national poll by the Kaiser Family Foundation, Harvard University’s Kennedy School of Government and National Public Radio...Only 8 percent of high school parents and 4 percent of middle school parents said schools should teach “that homosexuality is acceptable.” The survey had a margin of error of 6 percentage points."
If enough children opt-out, and enough parents complain (loudly and frequently), MCPS may be forced into establishing a parallel curriculum with an appropriate emphasis on abstinence. Right now, Montgomery County does not qualify for the federal government funding for abstinence education. CRC has heard many reports of the school system pressuring parents to let their children participate and giving false information about the percentage of participation. Don’t give in! This national battle for a parents right to educate their children in their family’s moral values is being fought right here in Montgomery County. Fight for your children!
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