Parents of 7th graders at a Pittsburgh private middle school are up in arms after a science teacher allegedly described oral sex in graphic detail during class, reportedly telling students to “look it up” if they wanted more information.
The alleged incident happened at Propel Hazelwood, part of the Propel Charter School system in South Side. One parent complained her young daughter ended up seeing graphic sexual images after the teacher encouraged her classmate to Google "oral sex" on the internet.
According to the parents, as a part of a science class – that includes a section on sex education – a teacher allegedly graphically discussed oral sex.
“‘We said we didn’t know what it meant, and he told us to look it up, but not on a school computer because they would be able to track it,’” said a parent of her child. “So, a little boy looked it up on his phone, and she saw images and she was traumatized.”
A school spokesperson said the school is actively looking into the situation after parents raised concerns at a student mediation meeting earlier this week. The spokesperson added that the speaker may not have been a teacher, but a representative with Adagio Health, a local health provider that reportedly partners with the school system to teach a sexual health education course.
If true, this would be far from the first time an instructor overstepped his or her bounds when discussing sexual issues with underage students in a classroom. Parents in Albany, New York lost it when an outside LGBT advocate was allowed to hand out vocabulary lists to 11-year-olds filled with more than 200 explicit terms about gender, sexuality, identity and preference, including terms like “catcher” and "tucking.”
A small private middle school in Minneapolis found itself in hot water a few years back after parents found out the school had taken students to an adult sex shop on a field trip. A high school in Philadelphia came under fire last year for working sexually charged questions into students’ math homework.