Time will tell if NDE board got message on health standards

The Nebraska Department of Education took a step back this week, agreeing to rethink proposed state health standards after an overwhelmingly negative response from Nebraska citizens.
How this proposal reached its initial format is still disturbing, but at least NDE board members had the sense to listen to constituents and go back to the drawing board.
Recent hearings on the proposed standards drew passionate feedback, with a reported 90 percent or more of those who spoke up testifying against the language as written. Based on local feedback, that’s probably a fairly accurate show of statewide disfavor.
Dist. 34 Sen. Curt Friesen voiced in an interview this week that he and other state lawmakers got an earful on this issue, almost all of it negative. He too shared concern with the proposal as written, as did many other senators. Friesen pointed out, however, that the Nebraska Legislature has nothing to do with this issue, and in fact has no authority over the Nebraska Department of Education, which is an independent body.
He, like many others, commended NDE board members for agreeing to revise the proposed standards, but suggested that citizens pay close attention when the updated version is made public this fall. I couldn’t agree more.
The fact is that the NDE board reached well beyond its scope of authority with proposed state health standards that address extremely sensitive issues which should instead be taught by parents in the privacy of the home.
According to the initial draft version, school children would be taught about gender identity stereotypes with a detailed curriculum beginning as early as kindergarten. Many of the topics addressed in the document have become hot-button issues in the modern social-political arena, but to see them reflected in policy recommended for all of Nebraska’s public  schools was  offensive.
For example, can you envision teachers in our local schools discussing with a classroom full of very young minds areas such as gender identity (1st grade), recognizing genitalia differences (2nd grade), differentiating between sexual orientation and gender identity (4th grade), or explaining sexual intercourse and how it relates to human production (5th grade)?
The answer, according to a vast majority of Nebraska residents, is no! It’s an inappropriate setting for such discussion, let alone concern with stretching the bounds of what elementary teachers should be expected to teach.
NDE officials heard loudly and clearly that it is both unnecessary and inappropriate to require educators to teach lessons better left to parents in the privacy of the home. Stay tuned to see if they truly got the message.
Kurt Johnson