Columbia Grammar and Preparatory School in New York City is under fire from enraged parents after requiring 120 high school juniors to attend a health and sexuality workshop, during which the presenter showed the students a lengthy slideshow about “pornography literacy.”
The workshop, taught by Justine Ang Fonte, director of Health & Wellness at Dalton, another prestigious prep school, presented the students with a slideshow that detailed the many ways in which consuming pornography can be harmful to the teens’ sexual experiences and also ways in which pornography could benefit them in the future.
One portion of the program explained to the pupils how to properly market themselves on platforms like Only Fans and another portion took them through the most-searched pornographic terms on the internet in 2019. The slides showed the students that cultural and ethnic searches such as “Japanese” and “hentai” were most popular, closely followed by search terms like “threesome,” “cartoon,” “BDSM,” and “stepmom.” Fonte also discussed things like the “orgasm gap” among heterosexuals, gay men, bisexuals and lesbians.
While many of the teens and parents at the school are outraged at the content of the workshop, which is titled “Pornography Literacy: An intersectional focus on mainstream porn,” the author’s intent, according to Dalton where she teaches, has always been to teach “important lessons related to body positivity, consent, and boundary setting with friends and others.” Fonte has not commented publicly on this matter. Dalton’s spokesman added, Dalton does not teach, nor have we ever taught, the type of curriculum that is being suggested…A small number of parents who misinterpreted the lessons this fall and expressed concerns were offered meetings with faculty to clarify. No additional concerns have been expressed to faculty.”
Columbia Grammar and Prep sent an email to the parents at the school, saying, “the content and tone of the presentation did not represent our philosophy, which is to educate our students in ways that promote their personal development and overall health, as well as to express respect for them as individuals…It was unfortunate that we did not better inform ourselves of the speaker’s specific content in advance,” Donohue continued. “In this case, the speaker did not align with our unique CGPS mission and for this, I apologize… Going forward we will certainly learn from this experience.”
