Jerry Springer wants to tell your children what to think

Note: I was hadn't planned on posting this. I'd heard what I mention in the first part of the post last week, but, after writing the "Jerry Springer is a Moron" I decided not to post it. It didn't quite fit in with that post, and, after bashing Jerry once today, I thought I would leave him alone. And then, a line from the site I had used to do the links below inspired the second part of this post. So, Jerry, the fates are against you today.

Last week Jerry mentioned a regulation passed by the school board in Kansas. The regulation would change sex education from being an "opt-out" program to an "opt-in" one. In other words, the previous pattern of "all children will have sex-ed class unless their parents specifically do not want them in the classes" to "children will not be enrolled in a sex ed class unless their parents specifically want them to be".

My first thought on hearing this was "I bet the school board had had tons of complaints from angry parents who didn't want their kids taught about sex...this is a great way to ensure that parents have control and the schools don't have to deal with irate parents."

Jerry, of course, had a different interpretation.

He pointed out that kids don't always bring forms home and they would miss out on sex-ed by default. He further mentioned that most parents don't really want their kids to learn about sex because they feel weird about it and therefore kids "who needed it the most" would not get sex education.

In other words, he doesn't care if parents miss their chance to opt their kids out of sex-ed because he thinks kids should have it anyway. And he also thinks that parents who are uncomfortable with their kids learning about sex shouldn't get a clear chance to refuse.

First off, the whole "what if kids don't bring the forms home" is silly. Just put it with the rest of the school registration forms and, if it doesn't come back with either a "yes, my child can attend sex-ed" or "no, my child cannot attend sex-ed", the parents get a phone call.

But secondly, and more importantly, it just shows a lack of respect for the feelings of parents. Jerry knows what your kids should learn...you don't.

As I mentioned in the note, I hadn't planned on posting this. It's last week's news and I already posted about Jerry today.

But then I noticed this on Jerry's Radio Webpage: "And have conservatives also gone nuts by stripping out all courses but reading and math from our kids' curriculum? Who will teach them how to think?"

This is disturbing on two levels. In the first place, American children are scoring appallingly badly on reading and math...y'know, the basics. Those two subjects are the bare minimum that kids need. If they don't have those first, the schools have failed.

I'm all for the arts as well. But you can't read literature until you learn to read. You can't learn about evolution until you have a solid basis in math so you can understand things like gene frequency. You can't act until you can read the script and you can't dance until you know how many sets of 8-counts will fit into 48.

But the second sentence is really the more disturbing. "Who will teach them how to think?"

Everyone knows how to think. We do it everyday. So that sentence is nonsense...unless he means more along the lines of "...how to think the right way?" or even "...what to think?"