Alert! Alert! Greenie Weenies Invade Montgomery County Maryland Public School System

I saw this column by conservative commentator Cal Thomas in our local "newspaper" but I sure didn't want to get it from their bug-infested archival system, so I went to the Jewish World Review, and sure enough, they had it. Thomas discuses a controversial Sex-ed curriculum in the Montgomery County Maryland's public schools that has some aspects that are...umm...er... vegetarian in nature:

The school system announced last week that a new sex curriculum will be introduced this spring for three middle schools and three high schools. Students will be taught how to put a condom on a cucumber.

Thomas says that Montgomery County School administrators were going to use technology in order to demonstrate this useful and much-needed (heh.) skill to the students of this Washington D.C. suburb:

That high percentage apparently doesn't extend to administrators in the Montgomery County public schools. Initially, the school system proposed using a video "show and tell" to teach the students how to put a condom on a cucumber.

But what if the technology fails? Cal Thomas tells us about the likely back-up plan:

Should they decide to employ a teacher to demonstrate the process, here's my advice for the lowly employee who will have to buy the cucumbers at the supermarket. If the checkout person says anything, your response should be: "I'm just buying some evolving pickles."

As a classroom teacher, I would like to know what aspect of the federal No Child Left Behind Act is addressed by this particular use of instructional time? After-all, our effectiveness as teachers is judged by how well students do on mandated tests and not the use of cucumbers as suitable anatomical models for questionable classroom subject-matter.

And what does the office of Montgomery County Public Schools have to say about the controversy? The website's "public announcements" section doesn't say a word about Cal Thomas, Sex Ed. or cucumbers.

The site does have plenty to say about Montgomery County Public Schools being one of the finalists in the "U.S. Senate Productivity Award." We also learn that Superintendent Jerry D. Weast won "School Administrator Award" from the Maryland Music Educators Association.

The office's silence regarding the sex-ed controversy further supports the theory that the preferred method of the educational bureaucracy when dealing with negative media attention is to ignore the media and hope that it goes away.

As for other media, they have plenty to say about Montgomery County's sex-ed curriculum. You can read it here, here, here, and the latest, there.

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