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Culture February 24, 2017
Kentucky public schools will now feature Bible literacy classes thanks to newly passed House Bill 128.
The bill – sponsored by Republican rep DJ Johnson – allows school districts to offer social studies courses on Hebrew scriptures and the Bible. He told the Lexington Herald-Leader that students need to understand “the impact the Bible had on our culture today.”
The bill apparently also requires that the state Department of Education develop regulations for the courses and find teachers qualified for such material. However, parents will be able to raise concerns should teachers start to evangelize or favor any particular religion.
If public schools teaching religion doesn’t raise enough of a red flag for you, remember that Kentucky essentially doesn’t have sex education. Or at least, they do, but the state allows individual local school boards to decide what is actually taught.
A Kentucky bible class gets a House bill, but is anyone worried about the lack of sex ed? Image via Fox/Giphy
And that plan is not exactly working out for Kentucky. See, back in 2015 the CDC surveyed states about what they teach to students when it comes to sex, and Kentucky had the lowest rate for teaching middle schoolers the full range of recommended material.
Of 16 topics the CDC deemed critical to sexual health, Kentucky was only actually teaching about four percent. And website sex, etc. reports that abstinence is the only effective method schools are required to teach as protection against unplanned pregnancy, sexually transmitted disease and HIV/AIDs.
So it’s no surprise to hear that while teen pregnancy is on the decline in the United States as a whole, it’s still a persisting issue in Kentucky. According to Planned Parenthood, Kentucky is among the top 10 states for high teen pregnancy rates.
RELATED: North Dakota Lawmakers to Women: Sundays Are for Making Your Husband Breakfast in Bed
Schools are not made to teach sex ed featuring information about condoms or birth control, even though 44 percent of students in grades 9-12 reported having had sex, per 2013 data.
Hopefully Kentucky teenagers can find other ways to learn about sex education – like those in Utah, thanks to redirects from porn site xHamster – since school boards apparently believe it is more pressing to learn about David and Goliath than STD prevention.
