MAUSTON, WI – Sex ed teachers need to rethink their curriculums unless they want to be considered criminals!
“Seems like a step back in time,” Mauston High School teacher Mike Taake told the AP. Taake has been teaching sex education for 30 years, but his usual curriculum may land him jail. According to him, students need all the nformation they can get about sex to make the best decisions, but teaching them about contraceptives has the potential to land him and other teachers in court.
In a shocking turn of events, Juneau County District Attorney Scott Southworth sent a letter last month to area school districts warning health teachers that tell students how to put on a condom or take birth-control pills could face criminal charges. According to Southworth, such teachings would be contributing to the delinquency of a minor, a misdemeanor punishable by up to nine months in prison and a $10,000 fine. It would be promoting sex among minors who are not legally allowed to have sex in Wisconsin.
“It puts the school kind of in the middle between two sides, between the government and state telling us what should be taught and what people think shout not be taught,” said Scott Lenz, a health teacher in the New Lisbon School District.
“I think he’s actually a little unrealistic,” said Audrey Jensen, mother of 16-year-old Justina. “Obviously he doesn’t remember being a teenager.
Southworth has said that he does not want to drag teachers into court, but simply felt the ethical responsibility to warn them of the consequences. He’s not the bad guy and the issue was “dumped in his lap.”
Taake has said that he will continue teaching sex ed his way. “It’s not just teaching them how birth control works. It’s everything else that goes with it,” he said. “To arrest me for teaching correct birth control and the student makes the wrong decision and gets pregnant, that’s not my decision.”
