P.A.P.A. - Yet Another Reason Not to Send your Kids to Government Schools

Texas has a new mandatory class that all high schoolers in public school must take, called P.A.P.A. - Parenting and Paternity Awareness.

“They talk about buying ‘x’ number of diapers -- over how many months and years and the cost,” explains Beverly Linkneyer, administrator of the Northside ISD health curriculum. *

The Texas Attorney General - who asked for the class to be taught (since when does the attorney general set curriculum policy?)- says that:

Key themes in the curriculum focus on the importance of father involvement, the value of paternity establishment, the legal realities of child support, the financial and emotional challenges of single parenting, the benefits of both parents being involved in a child's life, healthy relationship skills, and relationship violence prevention.**

Did you catch that?

The value of paternity establishment.

The legal realities of child support.

Now the government is wanting to teach your children how to be parents. Not only that, they are preparing your child for a life of single parenthood. No morality, just this will cost too much money - look at all the diapers you'll have to buy, the child support you'll have to pay, and how it will ruin your life. And since God and Christianity are banned from curriculum, does any Christian parent think that this class will be teaching their son or daughter how to raise their children up "in the fear and admonition of the Lord?" Do you really want the government teaching your children how to parent?

Setting the morality issue aside for a moment, in an age when everybody talks about how the education system is failing, and how we have to stress things like math and science, why are we spending millions of dollars and hours of school time teaching these things? Is this the proper arena for this? I think not. This is the job for parents, families, churches. Can schools who are failing academically afford to take the time to teach these things?

Finally, I did want to mention that the reason touted for this new curriculum is to address the extremely high numbers of teen pregnancy. While I share the concern for the problem, I completely disagree with their solution. Sex Ed has been taught in schools for at least 2 decades and the teen pregnancy numbers have just increased. Besides, what teenaged couple - or adult couple for that matter - will stop in the heat of the moment and say, "Wait, we can't do this. We can't afford the diapers."

*Click here for the local story. **Click here for the Texas Attorney General site describing the class.