Fairbanks school board stumbles on sex ed, doctor's YouTube responses draw 1 million-plus views
The master plan by then-Sen. Mike Dunleavy to suppress sex education in schools was to require advance written approval from parents “before children may attend each human reproduction or sex education instruction or presentation.”
Since advance written approval would never happen for tens of thousands of kids in Alaska, the plan by the future governor would have guaranteed that many children would only learn about these matters from their uninformed friends, movies and the vast realm of online sex materials.
The 2016 Legislature took a half-step back, opting to limit sex education in public schools by requiring that “materials addressing sexual education, human reproduction education, or human sexuality be approved by the school board prior to use.”
This is how you inject politics, usually of the right-wing kind, into the classroom. “The less said the better” is the guiding philosophy.
The Fairbanks school district has this short list of approved supplemental sex ed materials, no approved guest speakers and a cumbersome process to add materials that almost guarantees failure.
As a case in point, the Fairbanks school board met Oct. 19 to deal with six proposed additions to the list of supplemental materials. It should have been a simple process, but hysteria triumphed. The school board walked away in fear.
One of the six supplemental sources, which a competent teacher could put to good use with the right audience at the right time, are videos by Dr. Danielle Jones, 35, a board-certified obstetrician, gynecologist and mother of four kids. Jones, who is originally from Texas, has a sizable audience on social media, including 1.1 million subscribers on YouTube.
During the two weeks in which the school district sought comments on the proposed supplemental sources, one person objected to a video by Jones, while two people said the materials were mostly OK.
Five parents spoke at the meeting, claiming that children would be better off without hearing about sex.
School officials had proposed including the work of Dr. Jones because of her ability to put difficult matters into context, speaking in a straightforward manner and with some humor. She certainly has the background in medicine and communication and makes a point that viewers should think critically and not believe everything they see or hear.
A video by Jones, “5 ‘strange’ things your vagina does that are NORMAL,” has had 3.8 million views on YouTube in the past seven months. In total, her videos have had nearly 100 million views since 2017.
The videos posted by “Mama Doctor Jones” are not salacious or pornographic or similar to what might be found in Playboy, contrary to the overheated complaints of the right-wing grandstanders on the Fairbanks school board.
The public understanding wasn’t helped by a terrible headline in the Daily News-Miner that referred to “racy sex ed materials” or the panic-stricken blather of the Alaska Watchman blog.
Jones, now working as a physician in New Zealand, has created two videos that review her experience with the school board and the way her videos were portrayed.
The news coverage of this event was inadequate. The school board’s behavior was worse.
The first response video has already had 534,000 views, while the second has had 750,000, the largest audience the Fairbanks school board has ever had. The two videos have a total of 16,000 comments posted by viewers.
What Jones calls the “most bizarre experience of my Doctor YouTuber life” does not put the Fairbanks school board in a good light, deservedly so.
Jones said the school board discussion was like “watching Congress talk to Mark Zuckerberg” in 2018, an episode that featured pontificating by people who didn’t know what they were talking about.
Right-wing school board member April Smith complained that the district is “now putting into our children that Mama Doctor Jones videos on YouTube channel are an excellent reputable source for education.” She referred to some of the materials as humiliating.
Right-wing school board member Matthew Sampson said the videos by “mama what have you are undoubtedly questionable.”
“Why in the world would we associate with a YouTube channel that’s questionable?” said Sampson. Teachers can teach without YouTube, he said.
He did not say what videos are “undoubtedly questionable.” Sampson claimed the district had not vetted the content and was wasting the board’s time. He said he wanted sex education “stuff” that is not controversial and of higher quality.
Smith claimed that some “of the information that you find in the peripheral of this information is highly inappropriate.”
She did not say what is inappropriate and said she was disappointed in the teachers who wanted to bring up sex education and how the focus should be on keeping kids safe.
Smith falsely claimed that some of the materials encouraged dating violence and abuse.
Smith and Sampson want sex education lessons limited to not having or talking about sex. Or a discussion led by Church Lady about the stork. The safe “stuff” they want is worse than useless.
Part of the problem is the board won’t trust the teachers or administrators to demonstrate good judgment in doing their jobs.
What Jones has to say about sex and safety is educational and reliable, contrary to the uninformed claims by Smith and Sampson.
Jones said it’s alarming that there is no mandate that sex ed materials be medically accurate, based on evidence and that young people be taught the meaning of “consent.”
It is important for children to learn about themselves and develop safe and healthy attitudes toward sex. That’s not the same as promoting sexual activity.
“I have delivered babies to kids who are 13. That is why this is important even for younger children,” said Jones. “Having open communication about these topics is really, really important.”
You teach sex education to kids at a young age, she said, for the same reason that you teach people to wear a bike helmet before getting into a crash.
The two videos created by Dr. Jones about the Fairbanks episode counter many of the false claims spread by the Fairbanks school board that have never been corrected or retracted. The Daily News-Miner hasn’t covered her responses. It should do so.
The board should have asked some experts before it acted, someone like Dr. Jones.
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