Collapsing public education

From the Toronto Sun comes yet another reason why parents ought to seriously consider sending their children to a Catholic school, if they don't already (with my emphases and comments):

ST-HUBERT, Que. — A teacher has been suspended after she gave her Grade 8 students a sexually explicit multiple-choice test that included questions about anal sex, lesbian encounters and penis sizes [8th graders? I know aren't all innocent and naive, but still].

Several parents filed complaints [I can't imagine why] after students at Andre-Laurendeau High School, on Montreal’s south shore, were asked whether or not “blacks have bigger penises” [can someone explain to me why a teacher would ask this question of an 8th grade student?] or if they agreed that “all sexual positions are comfortable” [you know the agrument: they're going to have sex any way... So much for education helping to build character].

Students were also asked questions about sperm, anal sex and lesbian sex.

The school board has now opened an administrative investigation. School board director Andre Byette told QMI Agency that the exam was too explicit for young teens, adding that the teacher wrote the test herself as part of a religion and ethics course [I'm confused. What do penis sizes have to do with religion and ethics?].

“I find the questionnaire dubious [that's the best you can come up with?], even for college students,” said Byette. “We do not approve of the content of certain questions [I wonder which ones they do approve]. How does this help the sexual education of students? It’s totally unacceptable [agreed].”

The school withdrew the test following a parent’s complaint and ordered the teacher to stop teaching sexual education to students [that's a start].

When confronted by her bosses, the teacher said her test was aimed at fighting society’s prejudicial views about sexuality [stereotypes about penis sizes are prejudicial? I think she's a bit loony]. More parents then came forward, prompting the suspension.

Two sexologists contacted by QMI Agency were split about the value of the test [no surprise there].

Julie Pelletier, a Quebec psychotherapist and sex columnist, said the quiz was “inappropriate for the students of that age group [we need a sex columnist to tell us this? Ask any stranger on the street and I suspect you'll get the same answer].”

She says the elimination of sex-ed courses in Quebec has led to teachers taking their own, sometimes ill-advised, initiatives [Oh, it must be all right then; she was only ill-advised].

But sexologist Jocelyne Robert had a different view. She says the teacher has been convicted prematurely and was only telling teens about sexual issues they’re already seeing on the Internet and talking about in the schoolyard.

She says that sexual practices like sodomy and fellatio are not foreign to 13-year-olds.

“It’s there, it’s not anecdotal, it’s very known to young people,” she told QMI Agency.

“They see it wall to wall on the Internet. If we don’t talk about it, we’re sort of putting our heads in the sand.”