Enfield Public Schools District, in Connecticut, posted a “health” curriculum lesson for the District’s 8th grade classes.
…a “Pizza and Consent” assignment, where eighth-grade students were given a handout stating that pizza can be used as a “metaphor for sex,” which instructed students to list their favorite and least favorite pizza toppings “in relation to sex.”
“Here are some examples: Likes: Cheese = Kissing,” the assignment states. “Dislikes: Olives = Giving Oral,” stated the assignment given to eighth graders within the Enfield Public Schools.
Now build your pizzas, boys and girls.
The lesson was discovered and objected to last Monday (7 February as I write this) by Parents Defending Education, which objection finally prompted the District Superintendent Christopher Drezek to go before the school board and address the matter.
The simple truth was it was a mistake. And I know that there are some who may not believe that. I know there are some who don’t necessarily maybe want that answer. In this particular case, I didn’t even get a chance to because the person who made the mistake jumped ahead of it before I was even notified that it had happened.
He went on to claim that there was no hidden agenda in this.
The unnamed (in the article) District Health and Physical Education Coordinator, according to Parents Defending Education, emailed parents and apologized for the error [emphasis added].
The incorrect version, as opposed to the revised version of this assignment was mistakenly posted on our grade 8 curriculum page, and was inadvertently used for instruction to grade 8 Health classes. I caught the error after our curriculum revision in June, but failed to post the intended version. I own that, and apologize for the error[.]
The incident begs a number of questions, though.
- Why was the supposedly erroneous version created in the first place?
- Why, then, was it “mistakenly” posted to the 8th grade curriculum page in the second place?
- If the 8th grade curriculum page was the wrong target, for which curriculum page was it actually intended?
- If the Coordinator caught the mistake so long ago, why didn’t he remove the “error?”
- Why didn’t the Coordinator post the correct lesson at that time?
And this question: what is Drezek doing about his Coordinator and the person(s) who created the “lesson” and posted it? He needs to demonstrate the lack of any hidden agenda.