When my friend Bill told me in the coffee shop that the Port Angeles School Board was about to adopt a new sex-education program with the name FLASH (Family Life and Sexual Health), I just laughed [“Port Angeles Schools Adopts New Sex Education Curriculum,” PDN, Dec. 16].
I thought he was just telling me a joke.
It sounded like some good juvenile humor.
But it’s really true!
On Nov. 3, the School Board voted almost unanimously to implement the state mandated FLASH curriculum.
I don’t know if the FLASH acronym was chosen in mockery or simply in jest, but it seems wrong to me to trivialize something so important as sex education, and I was disappointed by the knee-jerk reaction of the board, which I had hoped would see it as beneath its dignity to rubber-stamp a program under that name without careful scrutiny and thoughtful deliberation as board member Susan Schotthafer tried to propose.
As far as sex is concerned, we all know that a bull is already out of the barn in America.
So we obviously need to provide good guidance for our children.
The parts I object to are the underlying assumptions and the agenda ideas which the FLASH curriculum advances.
I hope it is a matter of lacking discernment and not just that the board members feel uncomfortable talking about explicit sex in public.
Ideas do have consequences, and the School Board is tasked with advancing the public good.
Jon Didrickson,
Port Angeles