Portage Public Schools are considering changing their related curriculum for ninth graders to reach students earlier, as young as sixth grade.
Daniel Weiss, who has authored a pornography "field guide" for parents and serves as president of Sexual Integrity Leaders, says Protect Young Eyes provides "a very age-appropriate curriculum."
"It's a good group," he tells AFN. "I think they're doing a great job."
Weiss says these educational consultants are working to prepare young people to navigate a "really difficult world," which is needed in today's "sexually unhealthy" and "sexually confusing" culture.
"From the looks of it, this school is acting in a very proactive way," he comments. "They're moving it from the ninth grade down to the sixth grade because so many kids have been exposed and had not learned these lessons by the time they were reaching the material in high school."
According to The Christian Post, Protect Young Eyes' lesson does not show pornography, but it teaches what students should do if they come across inappropriate content.
Weiss understands why parents tend to shy away from this issue, but he says the opposite is needed. He encourages them to talk proactively and preemptively to let their kids know this stuff is out there, how to avoid it, and then what to do if they encounter it.
If it is too late for that, he advises parents to not overreact, but to calmly talk with their child about what they have seen and what kind of impact it had on them – and to do that fact-finding without judgment.
"We understand we live in a fallen world, and we're doing our best as parents and as school administrators to protect our kids and mitigate the damage that comes from this material," Weiss notes. "One of the things I've done is prayed with my kids that God would remove those images from their minds. That has been very effective."
Though he wants parents to be the ones who prepare their kids against pornography, he thinks Portage Public Schools are setting a healthy standard for students, "helping them know what is right and wrong and what to do about it, most importantly."
"This can really help with the social interactivity, because a lot of kids tend to share pornography with their friends," he relays. "I think this might also help curb that and prevent some exposure."
The school district's proposed changes were reviewed during a recent school board meeting.
