Action | Amendments Regarding Use of Controversial or Sensitive Instructional Materials |
Stage | NOIRA |
Comment Period | Ended on 1/15/2014 |
As others have stated, the wording of the proposed legislation is far too vague to accomplish the spirit of the legislation. Parents certainly deserve notification when their children are exposed to mature content, and while many teachers already provide this, I would imagine it's not universal...and that should certainly change. On the other hand, the total lack of guidance and direction in the legislation allows virtually anything to be critiqued as "sensitive", and while it's never a bad thing to review curriculum with consideration for alternative perspectives, this seems to put an incredibly unfair onus on instructors to unnecessarily justify and defend all curricula on the off chance one individual might find it "sensitive". It also unnecessarily limits the content available to classroom instruction, as most content in both English and Social Studies outside of the K-5 range begins to deal with potentially "sensitive" topics like death, war, heartbreak, hunger, survival, gender confusion, divorce, genocide etc etc etc etc.
I understand the intent, but this legislation will do more harm than good in the end.