Because of our busy ministry schedule (and the fact that 5 of our kids didn’t speak English for the first couple years after we adopted them) we home schooled all of our kids when we lived back in the States. Now we weren’t one of those families that home schooled our kids because we were wanting to “shelter them from the world” or anything like that. It was just the easiest and most logical route for our family to take. The fact that there were so many times when we were at church/church event until late the night before, and it wasn’t fair to expect the kids to jump out of bed the next morning and go to school at o’dark thirty. It was either that (home school) or we’d have to get up at 5AM trying to get everyone out the door to 4 different schools every morning. Talk about chaos... no thank you. We chose the home school option: )
But here, our kids are in the Brazilian Public School System. In Brazil, it’s the law that your kids HAVE to be in public school. It doesn’t matter if you want to home school (you can’t by-the-way) or not, they have to go. It doesn’t matter if they can’t speak Portuguese or not. It doesn’t matter that there’s no interpreter to actually tell them what the teacher is even talking about. It doesn’t matter what excuse or logical reason you have NOT to send them, they’ve got to go or they will bring you before a judge. And if that happens, you could possibly face time in jail. Now, as awesome as pioneering a prison ministry in another country sounds, for some reason “I’m just not feeling led” to go in that direction, lol! So, they go to school.
We really like the teachers and the faculty at the schools here. And we feel like they do the best that they can to accommodate our kids but their resources are limited (they're under staffed and under payed). So we’re navigating through all this the best we can. But if things don’t change we’re probably going to have to home school the kids AND send them to public school at the same time so we’ll know that they’re actually getting an education. Oh well, it’s just one of the many issues we’re dealing with. But back to the reason for today’s blog...
The other day Robert (our 6 year old) came into the house with Diogo’s (our 10 year old) science book from school. He wanted to show us a picture that his older brother had just shown him. So, MJ took it, then she turned the open book toward me so I could see the pictures too. We saw a cartoon picture of a woman’s anatomy and a picture of a man’s anatomy. Kinda weird for a kid to have in the 5th grade, but not the end of the world. But then it happened. As she turned a few more pages, there it was. A naked pregnant lady. Now when I think of naked pregnant ladies (which, by-the-way, I don’t) they don’t look like this! This one was like a super model who had decided to get pregnant and pose for the camera. I mean, there she was posing for the camera, the lighting was set just right, she was in perfect shape, she had no tan lines or blemishes, it looked like she had breast implants, the room where the picture was taken was obviously cold (get it?), definitely not a good thing for a 10 year old to have in his possession. What was this crap!? Why would you give 5th graders pornography? And if someone says it’s not, they’re retarded. If you were just wanting to show kids a picture of a pregnant woman why not do it where she at least has a bra on. And if not at least be realistic about what a “normal” pregnant woman looks like. Throw some stretch marks on her or something, come on! Seriously.
Then, as we turned the pages farther into the book, we found full color pictures of condoms and birth control pills and how to use them! For some reason that part really upset me. I don’t speak fluent Portuguese but I could tell, by what was written, that it was telling kids what these were as a recommendation not information. What’s up with that? What about telling them about the best form of birth control... abstinence!? Why wasn’t that there in the line-up? And why were they showing this stuff to a bunch of 5th graders? I’m a guy, and I’m a father of 6 boys, I was a youth pastor for a couple years, I’m here in Brazil ministering to children and teens full-time and I realize that we have to face stuff like this and talk to kids about it, we can’t just stick our heads in the sand. But I think it’s un-wise to show pictures this graphic to a bunch of 10 years olds! And to make recommendations for birth control to 5th graders without even telling them that best thing is to wait until they’re married to have sex? Seriously? And what about telling them about some of the consequences of having sex? And, if you want to show pictures, where’s the pictures of boys and girls with STD’s rather than the glamour shot of the pregnant super-model? Where’s the photo of the 15 year old girl, from the mountain where we live, that had a baby last year? The one that’s living in extreme poverty with her baby and with no father around (they actually think her 50 year old uncle got her pregnant)? Where are those pictures at? All they’re showing the kids is something that doesn’t reflect reality.
So, here we are, being forced to send our kids into a school system where the culture is very promiscuous and not looking at things the way that we do with the same values as us. We know that God sent us here so what do we do? What would you do?
Jim
PS- I didn’t want to post a super-long blog so you’ll have to come back tomorrow to see what we decided. Love you guys! Have a great day: ) And yes, the picture up top is of my son's book.
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