The cucumber people study videotapes of the game

Now that the Montgomery County Board of Education has lost the initial part of the litigation over its sex-ed curriculum, the committee that put the materials together is trying to figure out what went wrong. Should they have played hit and run or called for a straight steal? Whatever.

If I read this article correctly, the problem, in their minds, was with the teacher resource materials. But they never realized it would be a problem. Why not? Because they weren't going to let students or parents see it.

It wasn't the carefully worded curriculum the committee helped write -- curriculum reviewed at length by school system staff -- that derailed the new approach.

Rather, the program was undone by a packet of teacher resource materials that few on the committee thought would draw notice or objections and that students would not likely see.

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Fishback [the chairman] said committee members had not anticipated problems with the resource materials because the documents were for teacher reference and were not likely to be distributed to students.

So, I guess they expected to show the public one thing and to instruct the teachers to teach another. And I thought Montgomery County was the center of open government.