This academic year eighth-grade students at John F. Kennedy Middle School in Enfield, Connecticut were given an assignment that asked them to identify their favorite sex acts.  This idiotic assignment  is almost beyond belief or comprehension.  What business is it of an educator to know the sexual experiences and attitudes of their young students – 12 to 14 years old boys and girls? The students  were given choices of a wide range of sexual activities, from kissing to oral sex.

Exposure of the assignment led to outrage on the part of some parents, and the school principal quickly explained that it was all a mistake.  A different survey with a different set of choices had been intended.

Mistake or not, this story illustrates a serious problem that exists in our nation’s public schools.  These schools should concentrate on teaching the basics: reading, writing, mathematics, classic literature, science, languages, history (historical facts w/o interpretation), and technical skills (especially for the less academically inclined).  Venturing into other areas, such as sex education, sociology, popular literature, historical interpretation, etc. is invariably influenced by the experiences and world view of the instructor.  Unfortunately, that has been the trend in recent decades, and meanwhile the quality of basic education has declined.  Consider the test scores of American students compared to those of students from Europe and East Asia.

The Enfield middle school experience may be considered an aberration.  There are many great teachers and good schools all over the nation.  Yet, there is no doubt that a growing number of public schools and school districts are being infected with a progressive virus that promotes a variety of radical theories concerning sex, race, gender and overall societal relationships.  In some states I believe the situation is becoming critical as liberal activists insert themselves into positions of influence where they can control the academic curriculum.

I am convinced that the best solution would be for states to turn to an all-voucher system.  This would allow parents to seek out the best schools for their children, and I believe the end-result would be a vast improvement in the quality of our educational establishment.  Every school would attempt to better itself to attract superior students, and the bureaucratic overhead could be sharply reduced. Also, a voucher system would blunt the efforts of leftist extremists to infect the entire school system even as it permitted them to establish a few woke academies of their own design.  I doubt that they would attract many students.