Comments about ‘Education bill requiring suicide training passes committee’

My question is where are the parents? I agree that teachers may have a unique opportunity to help these children, but why must we continually burden teachers with everything that should be taken care of in the home?

If we lead the nation in attempts, why do we need to say we are somehow surprised by our state's numbers of suicidal teens? I hope we can openly address this issue and not simply teach teachers to detect warning signs.

How about teaching skill development in elementary grades or resiliency, hope, and optimism? The military has taken just such action with our troops because of a spike in their suicidal rates.

Recently one of the major news networks ran an article titled, after trauma teaching hope. The officer in charge talked of a program to teach skills of hope, optimism, and resiliency before troops were in intense situations. She said to wait to teach skills to troops once they are suicidal is like teaching them to use their weapons after they have been shot.

For me, skills of prevention, resiliency, hope, and optimism at an early age are a key component in reducing teen deaths and attempts.

Yet in response to the the rate of teen pregnancy and STDs, the legislature passes bills allowing the schools to drop sex education from the curriculum.

It shows that the legislators have fallen sway to the priggish moral crusaders from the Eagle Forum, rather than acting in the best interests of the public.

Two hours of training every 5 years is a complete waste of tax dollars. The government just wants to look like it is doing something.

Of course, whenever lawmakers see a problem, instead of getting to the real cause of the problem, they ask teachers to solve it.

"In addition to teaching reading, writing, math and science, could you please just solve the problems of obesity, hunger, poverty, and suicide for us too. Thanks, you're a doll!"

Then they get mad and punish teachers when test scores go down. DUH!!!!!!!!!!!!

Delta Fox this bill won't cost the state anything, it will be done during faculty meetings or other times that teachers are not already being compensated for and be added to the long list of other uncompensated trainings that teachers must have.

Re: slpa1 2:22 a.m. Feb. 23, 2012
"Yet in response to the the rate of teen pregnancy and STDs, the legislature passes bills allowing the schools to drop sex education from the curriculum."

Why should parents allow teachers who are confused about their own sexuality try teaching the subject to our children? Utah currently ranks 50th in the number of births to out-of-wedlock mothers. Obviously parents in Utah must be doing something right in teaching our children about morality.