In what will certainly lead to a firestorm of ethical debates within the sexual blogging community, a New York 7th grade teacher is currently barred from teaching after asking his students to draw male genitalia on the chalkboard during a lesson.

The school board defends their decision with a call for sensitivity and propriety:

“There was no way we were going to let him be in front of children,” [Yonkers school spokeswoman Jerilynne Fierstein] said.

Fierstein said the state’s seventh-grade curriculum calls for lessons in human anatomy and sexuality, but “as a teacher you have to be sensitive and you have to look at the age-appropriateness of any activity that you ask a child to do. And this was just not appropriate.”

However, some parents in the school district feel that the teacher should not be barred from teaching:

“Jon Klibonoff, a father of a student at the school, said he did not believe the material was inappropriate.”This is biology, it’s anatomy, it’s human sexuality,” he said. “They’re in puberty. They’re aware of it on one level or another.”

Yet the most bizarre quote comes from a fourth grader who was asked about his feelings regarding the issue:

“They’re not supposed to know what it’s supposed to look like at this age yet, so I think it’s a little embarrassing and it’s also a little inappropriate,” [Fourth grader Noah Klibonoff] said.

Regardless of an ethical position on the issue, it does strike one as odd that a fourth grader would be asked to comment on the age appropriate nature of an exercise in sexuality concerning his older peers.