Justine Ang Fonte, a teacher at Manhattan’s prestigious Dalton School who sparked outrage with her controversial sex education class for first-graders, has resigned.
The school’s head, Jim Best, acknowledged the change in an email to parents on Friday, according to the New York Post, months after Fonte showed the young pupils a film about masturbation. The short featured animated youngsters having candid conversations about sexual practices and bodily functions, such as erections and self-touching for pleasure.
“Hey, how come sometimes my penis gets big sometimes and points in the air?” a boy asks in the cartoon. “Sometimes, I touch my penis because it feels good.” Then a little girl adds, “Sometimes, when I’m in my bath or when Mom puts me to bed, I like to touch my vulva too.”
After parents, who spend up to $55,000 per year in tuition, expressed their outrage, the Dalton School apparently deleted the film from its curriculum.
“Throughout her tenure at Dalton, Justine Ang Fonte has helped to develop an exemplary K-12 Health and Wellness program. Dalton — our faculty, staff, administration, and trustees — continue to stand firmly behind this program and those who teach it,” Best wrote. “At faculty and staff meetings this week, Justine announced her decision to leave Dalton to focus on her work as an independent Health Educator. She has been working toward this goal for over a year. We support Justine’s aspirations and look forward to honoring her accomplishments as the academic year comes to a close.”
Fonte was also chastised last month for her Columbia Grammar & Preparatory School’s “pornography literacy” curriculum. According to the Post, the session was a co-ed session for juniors that covered a variety of porn genres, including “incest-themed,” “BDSM,” and “barely legal,” as well as statistics on the “orgasm gap” and “onlyFans’ marketability.”
Dr. William M. Donohue, Columbia’s head of school, addressed the workshop in an email to parents last month, insisting that the workshop’s “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.”
