Fig leaf education
John Richard Schrock - Emporia
Wednesday, March 19, 2008
FIVE YEARS AGO, a Wagle amendment attempted to curtail sex education media in Kansas university classrooms. The Governor vetoed the effort and a more reasonable recognition of academic freedom and academic responsibility prevailed.
Today, censorship is being legislated again. This time it is in K-12 education. SB 492 was passed by the Kansas Senate and is being considered this week by the House. Attached by Senator Brownlee at the 11th hour to a school teacher licensure revision, the addition is a case of good intentions and bad policy and had no chance for substantial public debate in the Senate.
Simply, teachers will lose their “affirmative defense” exemption from prosecution for obscenity. Kansas law has long recognized that pictures and words that are “obscene” by community standards when viewed or spoken on the corner of Main Street and First Avenue are quite appropriate and necessary for both doctors and teachers in the appropriate medical and school settings.
Few would question a medical doctor’s need to be able to use explicit language and illustrations when discussing reproductive problems with a patient. And it sure isn’t obscene. Likewise, teachers have the same need to explain and illustrate concepts in both health and human reproductive biology. While the motivation for the addition dealt with reading lists in language arts classes in the Johnson County region, this new provision will bring most sex education in Kansas to a halt.
This provision applies to all teachers: “A teacher shall not read, use or display in a school any material for which an affirmative defense to prosecution may be asserted under...K.S.A. 21-4301 ...” (the obscenity exemption for teachers). There is an exemption if the “use, reading or display has been approved by the board of education,” but such a provision is no different than requiring doctors to clear everything they might tell a patient with their hospital administrator. Likewise, the variable flow of responsible class lectures and discussion cannot be micro-managed. We should not put all health and biology books in brown paper wrappers. Nor should we muzzle the teacher from clarifying a slang term in proper terms.
Principals are also subject to prosecution if any teacher, any class, any function day-or-night might contain something the community would find obscene on the public street corner, regardless of its being in legitimate educational context.
This has been added to criteria under which the state board of education revokes teaching licenses, alongside capital murder and manslaughter. The risk to teachers and administrators of felony conviction and loss of license is far too great. No local school board will want to publicly sanction anything “obscene” despite its appropriate professional context. The consequence is simple: those lessons will be struck completely from curricula across the state.
Professional Kansas teachers and administrators, as well as the students of Kansas, do not deserve such fig leaf legislation.
John Richard Schrock trains biology teachers and lives in Emporia.
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