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Government Schools Pretend They Are Family

Domenick J. Maglio, Ph.D. Neo Traditionalist

By a 7 to 2 decision the Portland, Maine school committee voted to allow students as young as eleven years old to receive birth control bills or the patch without parental consent. Harry Harkavy, The Associated Press, “Maine Middle School to Make Birth Control Available”, Tampa Tribune, October 19, 2007. P. 8. In essence, these committee members have decided they have the wherewithal to take over a major responsibility of all the families in order to protect a few abandoned children. It is un-American to take parental power and give it to the state. That is why children have parents.

The seven members voting for this misguided policy are “humanitarians” attempting to prevent a miniscule number of students from an unwanted pregnancy. They are not looking at the long-term consequences for students or the sanctity of the family unit.

There are tremendous physical and psychological issues with directing a preteen to be placed on synthetic chemical hormones. Are our tax dollars going to pay for an employee to supervise the daily intake of the pill and the necessary corrective measures for complications arising from this unnatural chemical introduced into a developing body? There is substantial evidence of the adverse effects of synthetic hormones on mature women’s bodies including a higher incidence of cancer.

Are these committee members going to leave their own loved ones to spend stressful nights with an emotionally confused eleven-year-old child. When she cries all night because she does not understand why the boys avoid her after having had sex with her, or inform her she has a sexually transmitted disease or she slips out the window to meet someone she should not, is the bureaucrat going to be there?

Any eleven year-old child having sex with anyone is a crime. Preteens are not ready to consent to having sex. There should be an investigation to determine who is involved and where it is happening. When it is taking place on school grounds, the perpetrator as well as school officials should be held accountable. If it is happening with parental knowledge or due to a lack of supervision, parent neglect charges should be pursued.

We must protect children by enforcing the law, not by condoning self-destructive behavior by handing out birth control pills like candy. Sex is a powerful force that cannot be unleashed without dire consequences to youngsters. There is no chemical concoction the government can dispense with or without parental consent that will bring back the lost innocence of a molested child.

Any government agency, including public school, can never provide the quality of sacrifice and love that a family can. Government control of education, health, child rearing and the economy consistently has a dismal mediocre record. Whenever the government takes over any institution, it eventually settles at the lowest common denominator of effectiveness.

Instead of government school districts viewing these preteen victims on an individual basis, they tend to overreach, establishing a global policy usurping parental rights and responsibilities affecting all families. Disrespecting the crucial and sacred relationship between parent and child for the sake of assisting a particular out-of-control child, undermines all families therefore all children. There will never be enough tax money and inspired bureaucrats to replace all the duties of parents.

There is a wide range of the quality of parenting although government intrusion seldom measures up to even the quality of most of the least functioning families. When government attempts to help a few children by ignoring the rights of all parents, it harms the strength of the family. Most parents are honorable people who have the right to be informed of the behavior of their children by school officials.

Parents are legally responsible for their children. Remove the power from parents to decide what is best and give it to eleven-year-old children ultimately means the children will be ill prepared to develop into healthy people.

Government schools must restrain themselves in the piecemeal process of taking over the functions of the family. This process of intervening in the family is weakened the lynchpin of our society.

Schools need to stop pretending to be the new futuristic family and instead work together with families for the betterment of the child.