Politicians seeking to bypass parents on sex ed, mandatory school age

It would be so much easier for politicians if pesky parents didn’t keep insisting that they knew their children best.

Every session, our exulted overlords in Carson City have to fend off moms and dads who believe they — without any government certification or peer review — should make the decisions that shape their children’s future. Some parents even have the gall to assert that they should treat their own children differently based on differing development needs.

Fortunately, politicians like Assemblywoman Olivia Diaz, D-North Las Vegas, and Assemblywoman Amber Joiner, D-Reno, are here to treat your children like the widgets they are.

Diaz has proposed Assembly Bill 186, which would reduce the compulsory school age from 7 to 5. She testified that Nevada has about 37,300 5-year-olds, but just 34,626 of them are enrolled in public kindergarten. You might think having 92 percent of 5-year-olds enrolled in public kindergarten shows that the status quo is working — starting at 5 fits most kids, and parents hold off when a child isn’t ready — but you’re obviously not thinking like a liberal.

Liberal politicians are running a factory that produces widgets — you commoners call these widgets “children.” No factory supervisor could accept an 8 percent error rate. Politicians’ track record of, ahem, “success” with Nevada’s public school system proves that we can blindly trust them.

That’s especially true with sex education.

On Wednesday, Assembly Education will hear AB348, Joiner’s proposal to make a number of changes to sex education in Nevada. The most fundamental change is that parents would have to opt their widgets — err … children — out of sex education, instead of making schools seek and receive the permission of parents to discuss sex education.

In the Clark County School District, 95 percent of parents gave their children permission to receive sex ed, but if you think that shows a functional system that respects parental authority, you don’t have the mindset of a liberal.

Assembly Bill 348 would mandate that sex ed be “age-appropriate” and feature “all options authorized by law for family planning.” You rubes may call that abortion, but there’s no need to upset the Bible thumpers with the “a” word. It would also put students on the sex ed advisory committee. After all, parents have a lot to learn from students about what their children should be taught about sex.

What politicians really need to do is cut out parents entirely. How could parents possibly know more about their own children than 63 politicians sitting in Carson City?

Can we get a bill for that?

Victor Joecks’ column appears in the Nevada section each Monday, Wednesday and Friday. Contact him at vjoecks@reviewjournal.com or 702-383-4698. Follow @victorjoecks on Twitter.