Following up on yesterday’s revelation that federally-funded abstinence programs offer wildly incorrect information to students, it’s also worth noting that these same curricula often take a neo-puritan approach to demeaning women.
As Paul Waldman noted yesterday, some of these programs, which we pay for, offer a nineteenth-century view of sex roles to public school students.
The curriculum also teaches: “The father gives the bride to the groom because he is the one man who has had the responsibility of protecting her throughout her life. He is now giving his daughter to the only other man who will take over this protective role.”
One book in the “Choosing the Best” series presents a story about a knight who saves a princess from a dragon. The next time the dragon arrives, the princess advises the knight to kill the dragon with a noose, and the following time with poison, both of which work but leave the knight feeling “ashamed.” The knight eventually decides to marry a village maiden, but did so “only after making sure she knew nothing about nooses or poison.” The curriculum concludes: “Moral of the story: Occasional suggestions and assistance may be alright, but too much of it will lessen a man’s confidence or even turn him away from his princess.”
This sounds more like a parody of conservatives from The Onion, but alas, this textbook is being used in public school classrooms. Young girls are, apparently, getting federally-funded lessons on the dangers of nagging. Welcome to Bush’s America.
So, to review, the administration’s abstinence-only approach gives students blatantly false information and a twisted gender-role worldview, while having no effect on young people’s sexual behavior. Bush sees this and decides it’s time increase federal funding for these programs.
The mind reels.