Another inappropriate government website for Alberta kids
Theresa Ng with the Informed Albertans blog uncovered a whole slew of inappropriate links a few months ago, and the government took them down, but last week, another link surfaced, this one entitled “Sex from A to Z”. It resembles an electronic set of alphabet flash cards but with extremely graphic descriptors for each of the letters in the alphabet. (A description of those flash cards can be found here, but with a strong parental warning: this link includes some very explicit and disturbing content.)
Ng says she was surprised to find this new link. “When I first wrote my blog article in the middle of March, talking about the sexually graphic material that I had found, I actually didn’t find these ‘A-Z cards.’ It was actually somebody else, afterwards, that found them and sent to me and said, ‘did you this?’ I was shocked. (The links) are very inappropriate, especially for kids.”
The links she highlighted talk about the promotion of pornography and anonymous sexual encounters.
There is no longer any direct online link from the Alberta Education website to any of this content. Ng says the government continues to recommend the organizations behind these links as being “appropriate resources” for students. And she says the governance of these organizations continue to raise some fundamental questions. “The Institute for Sexual Minority Studies and Services actually shares a director (with) the CHEW project – the “Comprehensive Health Education Workers” project – which has posted these A-Z cards on their website. So why are these people who are putting these very inappropriate materials on their resource page providing services in our K-12 schools for kids?”
Ng is also wrapping up a letter-writing campaign on this issue this week. She’s collecting letters to be forwarded to Education Minister David Eggen. To learn more about that project, you can click here.
