Garrett Jones, the assistant principal at the Terwilliger Elementary School in Florida, admitted that he thinks it’s appropriate for students in kindergarten through fifth grade to read a book about pornography and dirty magazines in school.
The board hearing took place in January but it gained more attention after Libs of TikTok shared a clip of it Friday.
The hearing was about the book "Melissa" (formally published as "George") that’s available in the Alachua County Public School District elementary campuses. The book is about a transgender 4th grader.
Susan Seigle, the school’s attorney, insisted the book didn’t have any pornographic content but Dr. Crystal Marull, a mother and a professor at the University of Florida with a masters degree in education, who did the primary questioning of Vice Principal Jones, disagreed.
During Jones’ time as a witness, Marull asked him about his three children at home. She said, “would you find it appropriate if they brought this book home and were talking about dirty magazines or pornography in a K to five environment?”
“I think it would open up a conversation that we would have,” Jones said.
“So you think the book is appropriate in the K to five environment even though it references pornography and dirty magazines,” Marull asked.
Jones insisted that he voted for the book to be allowed in grades three to five, not K through five. Okay - so ages eight to twelve instead of five to twelve.
Then Marull asked him straight up: “So you think an eight-year-old would be [an] appropriate age to be reading about pornography and dirty magazines in school?”
“Yes,” Jones said confidently.
According to a report from Fox News, the book refers “to a child’s sex organs in crude terms.” Here are a couple of excerpts from it:
- She immersed her body in the warm water and tried not to think about what was between her legs, but there it was, bobbing in front of her.
- There was nothing George dreaded more than when boys talked about what was in her underpants.
- Melissa locked herself in a stall, delighted for the privacy. She lifted her skirt to see her underwear, covered in tiny red hearts. She pulled it down, sat, and peed, just like a girl… This part of this magnificent day was her personal secret.
According to the Alachua Chronicle, Marull said that she didn’t approve of the book being accessible to elementary students due to the fact that a “14-year-old comments to his 10-year-old brother about his pornographic interests; those passages could open a door in a child’s mind to inquire or seek out more information about, quote, ‘dirty magazines’ and ‘pornography,’ keywords that a 10-year-old should not be contemplating or be instructed about from a book in their school library.”
To make things worse, Jones admitted that gender identity was part of the fifth grade curriculum for sexual education.
Marull also asked if Jones felt it was appropriate to be pointing students to websites like the Trevor Project, which specializes in transitioning kids. Jones agreed it wouldn’t be appropriate for students to be able to access this site on school computers but admitted that he didn’t know whether or not they could.
Nonetheless, the school board voted 4-1 to keep the book in the school.
If you needed another reason to homeschool your kids, here it is.
