Wednesday, April 04, 2007

GRRR...

Brian just called.

He is taking an on-line middle-school health class from a program that happens to be sponsored by a religious university. He's taken previous classes from them. Evan took high school health from them last summer and had no complaints. Other kids have taken other classes. No one has reported any religious content.

But he just turned in an on-line homework. He got two questions wrong.

One of them was: What is the best way for you to avoid contracting AIDS:

  • I will exercise regularly and eat a balanced diet
  • I will not participate in homosexual activity
  • I will not use use illegal drugs
  • I will not share my razor with anyone or needles other people use when piercing their bodies

The answer? "Don't participate in homosexual activity."

He is furious. It is not about the grade. It is about the prejudice.

Update: Brian mis-reported the "correct" answer. It is actually "I will not use drug, have pre-marital sex, or participate in homosexual activities." Still bad, but not as shocking.

One of the "wrong" answers was actually "I will only use legal drugs and when I am of age have only one sexual partner."

5 comments:

  1. Are you serious?! This was seriously the correct answer?! But that's just wrong, just plain and simple wrong. It's not a FACT.

    It's times like this that I am so, so glad I live in the part of the country I do. I can't imagine what it would be like to have this in the environment all the time (I understand that it was an online thing, but still...I don't think we're exposed to that much religion-based discrimination here.)

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  2. Horrible. I took a college Human Disease course a few years ago and there was a question about the demographic that has the fastest growing occurences of new HIV diagnoses. The teacher said the answer was homosexual males. I had to print out data from the CDC in order to dispute and get him to correct his answer. That may have been correct in the early 80s, but it isn't correct now.

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  3. Anonymous1:53 PM

    Ugh. So what is his plan? Can he write the teacher?

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  4. That's disgraceful but not unexpected.

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