Preempting parents
The battle over sex education in schools is largely about that, too — who gets to teach young people about sexuality and homosexuality? Parents or schools (i.e., the state)?
The usual argument seems to be that parents aren’t doing the job and, given the high social cost of unwed pregnancy, the schools must step in to compensate for bad parenting.
There may be something to that, though it seems rather arrogant to mandate such education for all children, irregardless of whether there is in fact any evidence that a particular child’s parents have neglected teaching him about sex.
But if the justification is to make up for bad parenting, why are children being given sex education as early as kindergarten? Surely the parents ought to be given more time to do it themselves, unless the real goal is preemption.
And if the argument is that sex education must be started very early to be of any use … that strikes me as a telling admission.
