Parents outraged after students were taught a porn course at elite New York prep school

Columbia Grammar & Preparatory School in Manhattan, which has an annual tuition of $47,000, had the junior class attend a health and sexuality workshop without specifying the lessons that were to be taught.

According to the New York Post, a student said that they thought it was "just going to be about condoms or birth control."

However, the school hired Justine Ang Fonte—the director of Health and Wellness at another elite prep school—to teach a lesson titled, "Pornography Literacy: An intersectional focus on mainstream porn."

While some students attended the required presentation in the school's gym, others attended at home on Zoom which alerted parents to the raunchy subject matter that was being taught to their children without their approval.

Examples of Fonte's presentation include statistics on the "orgasm gap" which posit that straight women have fewer orgasms with their partners than those is gay and lesbian relationships; photos of partially-nude women in bondage for those to analyze "what is porn and what is art;" and instruction that porn takes care of "three big male vulnerabilities."

The presentation also included a list of the most popular searched pornographic terms of 2019, including "creampie," "anal," "gangbang," "stepmom" and more.

In addition, students were shown slides of different genres of pornography including; incest-themed, barely legal, consensual or vanilla, and kink and BDSM.

The example that was shown for the kink and BDSM category included; "waterboard electro" which is a form of torture porn.

"We were all like, "What?" A female student told the Post. "'Everyone was texting each other: 'What the hell is this? It's so stupid.' Everyone knows about porn. The worst part of it was that it took place not long before the AP tests and I had to miss both my AP classes for this."

The presentation also included a lesson on the "marketability of Only Fans," a popular new app used by sex workers where individuals can signup and watch them engage in sexual activity.

"We were all so shocked and mortified," the girl told the Post. "We were all like, "Why are they doing this? Why do they think it's OK?"

"We were supposed to answer questions about the porn stuff in the Zoom chat but we were all side-chatting in group chats and tons of kids thought it was so dumb that they sent the link to their friends all over the city and they were all logging on with the password."

The female student's mother also talked to the New York Post and said although she is extremely frustrated and would love for a public outcry, her family doesn't want to participate in "cancel culture" and asked to remain anonymous.

"Most parents feel the same way I do about not going public but at the same time we're incredibly frustrated by what's going on. None of the parents knew this was planned. We were completely left in the dark. It makes us wonder what else the school is up to," the student's mother said.

A parent of a middle-schooler at Columbia Grammar & Preparatory School, which is K-12, said, "It's outrageous that the school is introducing pornography into a mainstream classroom and starting to indoctrinate kids. The goal of this is to disrupt families."

"Why is the school making porn a priority as opposed to physics, art, literature or poetry?" she continued.

A spokesperson at Dalton, the elite school where Fonte teaches, defended Fonte's work even though parents told the Post that Fonte teaches inappropriate discussions of sexuality and alleged masturbation to first and second grade classes.

"Dalton does not teach, nor have we ever taught, the type of curriculum that is being suggested," the spokesman said. "Our health classes do teach students important lessons related to body positivity, consent, and boundary setting with friends and others. 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."

Fonte's workshop is seemingly connected to a "pornography literacy" program for adolescents that was developed Boston of 2016 through a partnership with the city Health Commission and a Boston University professor.

According to the New York Post, the program was designed to educate students that "pornography is created for entertainment and generally not for instructional purposes" and about the dangers of sexting. Parents and students are supposed to be informed when the content was to be presented before the class, but this time around, they failed to do so.

Columbia’s head of school Dr. William M. Donohue emailed the school's parents and said 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."