ORLANDO (BP) — Guarding children from abuse entails not only shielding them from danger, but also teaching them wisdom and discernment, panelists said at a June 8 breakfast in conjunction with the Southern Baptist Convention (SBC) annual meeting in Orlando.

The breakfast, sponsored by the SBC Executive Committee and the Evangelical Council for Abuse Prevention, convened Christian educators and ministry leaders to introduce the “Safe Guards” school curriculum, designed to equip K-5 students with abuse awareness and prevention skills from a biblical worldview perspective.

“Abuse prevention instruction does not need to be sensationalized,” said “Safe Guards” coauthor Lynne Little, founder of Compass Education. “It does not need to be fear-based. It does not need to be sexually graphic. This is not sex education the way secular humanistic paradigms approach this topic. Instead, abuse prevention instruction can be effectively rooted in a biblical worldview.”

The curriculum is divided into two age levels, one for kindergarten through second grade, and another for grades 3-5. It features six units covering topics like learning to say no, respect, privacy, being lost and bullying. It gets no more explicit than telling children no one other than parents and doctors should see the parts of them covered by a bathing suit.

One lesson tells children the story of a brother and sister approached in an arcade by a stranger asking them to help find his lost phone. The siblings feel uneasy and remember their parents’ instructions to stay together and not to leave a certain area. The scenario is accompanied by questions to help students develop discernment.

“Safe Guards” also helps parents engage in further discussion with their children to follow up on classroom instruction. Companion resources are available for home school and parents through New Growth Press.

The need for discernment education is evident from abuse statistics. One in three girls will be sexually abused before age 18 and one in seven boys, said Jeff Dalrymple, the SBC Executive Committee’s director of abuse prevention and response.

Abuse survivors report “life-long trauma” that is “heartbreaking,” Dalrymple said. “It can oftentimes be the source of substance abuse and suicidal ideation. And in some cases, survivors of abuse can also be abusers in a heartbreaking cycle that has got to be stopped.”

Sadly, children are likely to see perversions of God’s plan for gender and sexuality from an early age, so parents and schools should equip them to confront the danger from a biblical worldview, said Wesley Scott, executive director of the National Alliance of Christian Schools. Spotting red flags often can help children escape from potential abuse.

“We don’t want to take the ideology-based instruction of the world’s sex education and try to import it into a Christian school; apply biblical principles, biblical integration and try to make it work,” Scott said. “Safe Guards” gives educators a way to avoid that conundrum while “looking at ways that we can help kids be safe.”

Neither will the problem of abuse be solved by teaching “stranger danger,” the notion that people children don’t know are unsafe, said Julie Lowe, a licensed professional counselor and coauthor of “Safe Guards.”

“Ninety percent of people who are abused are abused by people they know,” she said. Strangers “aren’t dangerous. Dangerous people are dangerous … You don’t teach kids just to be afraid of strangers.” She added that “if a child is ever lost, their very ability to approach a stranger is a critical safety skill.”

David Wilcox, a retired assistant vice president with the Association of Christian Schools International, urged the boards of Christian schools to become more involved in abuse prevention, not assuming parents are giving all the needed biblical instruction on the topic in their homes.

Boards “need to make sure the mission of the school is demonstrated in the curriculum choices of the school and the training program of the school,” including curriculum and training on abuse prevention, Wilcox said. Boards “can’t begin with the assumption that Christian families have placed this as a priority.”

K-12 education comprises some 13,000 hours of classroom instruction, Scott said. “All it takes is just a few hours of godly, biblical instruction from biblical Christian teachers to help kids be safeguarded from abuse.”

(EDITOR’S NOTE — David Roach is a writer in Mobile, Ala.)