State Rep. Bob McDermott says Pono Choices is as good as dead, now that parents will have to opt their children in to participate in the controversial middle-school sex education program.
"It’s dead. We have effectively stinkified it, where no parent is going to want to sign their kids up for it, and with good reason," McDermott (R, Ewa Beach-Iroquois Point), a leader in the charge against Pono Choices and Hawaii’s same-sex marriage law, said Tuesday in his office.
Pono Choices, billed as a "culturally responsive" program to help reduce teen pregnancies and prevent sexually transmitted infections, had been under fire since last year’s special session on gay marriage amid criticisms that it’s medically inaccurate — classifying the anus as genitalia, for example — and includes explicit lessons inappropriate for students as young as 11 years old.
McDermott said he was prepared to sue on the grounds that Hawaii law requires state-funded sex education be medically accurate using factual information that is age appropriate, and include education on abstinence.
The state Department of Education announced Friday that it has asked the University of Hawaii at Manoa’s Center on Disability Studies, which developed and owns Pono Choices, to revise the curriculum before the 2014-15 school year using recommendations made by a stakeholder review panel.
The panel focused on 15 parts of the curriculum that were identified as controversial, including the teaching material’s definition of sex, anus, pono and abstinence; a condom demonstration; relationship scenarios that included same-sex couples; and images of sexual and reproductive anatomy parts.
The DOE says no schools will implement Pono Choices — previously one of seven DOE-approved programs for middle schools to use for sexual health education — until the department has received a revised version for review.
McDermott called the move to an opt-in versus an opt-out decision a "victory for parents" along with the review panel’s recommendation that parent-night materials be changed to match the exact wording in the curriculum regarding the definition of sex and the actual language from relationship scenarios.
A father of eight children, McDermott said he’s not opposed to sex ed being taught in schools.
"I’m not against sex education. I’m not even against telling young people about condoms," he said. "We have gone from an abstinence-based (program) to a comprehensive sex education program overnight."
The university said in a statement that it will "make necessary adjustments that continue to align with the most up to date research and practices regarding medical accuracy and age appropriateness to ensure the use of Pono Choices for the upcoming school year."
