Eight years ago, a Malawian girl’s fight to end the African country’s horrific practice of child molestation and rape made the pages of Time Magazine. The story, with its explicit content and adult themes, was an appropriate fit for Time’s serious adult readership. Yet, over the summer of 2024, the New Mexico Public Education Department intentionally placed the same story into a reading program for 11-year-olds. 

The article, “Girls Around the World Are Standing Up For Their Rights,” was originally published in Time Magazine by Dr. Jill Biden. In it, she recounts the story of Memory Banda, a 19-year-old who refused to participate in a Malawian “initiation camp” after witnessing the damage done to other girls who dutifully followed the sickening tradition. These initiation camps, which Biden’s article refers to as a twisted “coming-of-age ritual,” teach girls as young as nine years old how to “please their future husbands” by forcing them to have sex with adult men, some of whom intentionally infect the girls with HIV and other diseases. 

Banda chose a different path, refusing to attend an initiation camp and pursuing an education instead. Her story, both horrifying and redemptive, is clearly not meant to be read by children, especially not children the same age as those being sent away to be molested and raped in Malawi. Yet, the New Mexico Public Education Department (NMPED) apparently thought otherwise and included Biden’s article in its 2024 summer reading program for rising 7th-graders in need of literacy tutoring. 

For the 11-to-12-year-olds enrolled in the summer reading program, being exposed to explicit content about children their age who had suffered sexual brutality could be deeply disturbing. 

This content was also completely age-inappropriate according to New Mexico’s own standards. The state’s Health Education Content Standards require that students begin learning about the reproductive system around 6th grade. Students do not learn about sexually transmitted diseases or unintentional pregnancy until 9th-12th grade. 

What’s more, New Mexico requires that parents be given the opportunity to opt their children out of sex education classes. These parents, who likely hoped to teach their children about sexual health according to their own timeline and values, did not anticipate that their children would be learning about child rape and sexually transmitted diseases in their summer reading program. 

Unsurprisingly, parents took issue with the article’s inclusion. In an NMPED email provided to IW Features by the New Mexico Freedoms Alliance, all teachers and tutors participating in the summer reading program were alerted to the fact that “7th grade material has been perceived as inappropriate or upsetting by several families […] After this article was used, several families had to have difficult conversations regarding rape and sexual consent with their 11- and 12-year-old children.”

Thanks to outspoken parents, Biden’s article was removed from the summer reading program – but only after the participants had already read it. Now, those children must grapple with the disturbing sexual content they encountered long before they reached the maturity necessary to process it. 

Unfortunately, this is only the latest example of inappropriate sexual content finding its way into the hands of public school children. Just last fall, concerned community members in Las Cruces, New Mexico discovered that “Jack of Hearts and Other Parts,” a novel that discusses pedophilic teacher-student relationships and underage sex, was available at a local public school library. Students as young as 14 years old were allowed to check-out the book, even after pushback from the community.

Despite growing evidence that early exposure to sexual content is extraordinarily harmful to children and to their future ability to form healthy relationships, age-inappropriate material continues to be integrated into public-school libraries across the country – and now into summer reading programs as well. 

While NMPED did the right thing by removing “Girls Around the World Are Standing Up For Their Rights” from the summer reading list in response to parent complaints, the article should never have been approved for 11-year-olds in the first place. Parents must be able to assume that their children won’t be traumatized by the people entrusted with their education.