John C. A. Bambenek (![[info]](http://l-stat.livejournal.com/img/userinfo.gif){kind=small} bambenek) wrote,@ 2004-12-02 14:44:00 |
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Sex-Ed in Schools
With the large turn-out I've had on my analysis of the Waxman hit-piece on abstinence education, I thought I'd take some time discussing what a real sex-ed program should be:
That's right, nothing. I don't believe schools should be touching sex-ed at all. I think it's a shame we have to ear-mark funding to talk to kids about the fact it might just be a good idea to not have sex instead of teaching them sexual technique and pleasuring in high school. (No joke, the public school where I grew up gave time to how to get your girl to have an orgasm). I'm not going to recover my steps on the Waxman analysis below, but in an ideal world we wouldn't have the federal government dictating funding and program choices to local school boards. Those closest to the kids should be making those decisions, namely the community where the school is.
We shouldn't "legislate morality" is the constant drum beat of the left. Great, I agree. The problem is that any discussion of sex deals with a moral issue. What set of sexual ethics should we encourage our kids to have? Should we teach them about safe sex? Should we teach them about abstinence? I don't believe the government is in any position to address this issue, certainly not the schools. We allow parents to make religious choices for their kids in this country, why can they not make the choice about the sexual ethics they want to teach their kids?
There is program after program about getting parents involved in drug prevention of their kids and rightfully so. There are guides for parents to talk to their kids about alcohol, smoking, and so forth. These programs work and they are rightfully promoted. Parental involvement in their kids lives is critical and crucial for their development. So we trust parents to help keep their kids off drugs, but when it comes to sex we don't trust parents to educate their kids.
I constantly hear this mantra "well kids will do it anyway". You know, it's a funny thing about children. They meet your expectations. You expect them to run around chasing their genitals and treat the genitals of the opposite sex as a goal post, and that's just what they'll do. Maybe, just maybe, we should leave the ethical training to the parents instead of Planned Parenthood, who happens to have a vested financial interest in sexually active kids.
This problem is further exacerbated by the fact the schools want to teach sex-ed but only in the context of safe sex. There isn't any instruction about what sex is (aside of the mechanics) and what it should be. These foundational issues should be there and are essential to a proper sexual ethic. Yeah, telling kids not to have sex without telling them what it's general purpose is won't work. Framing the discussion about the nature and purpose of sex is a little different.
Lastly, this idea that abstinence education doesn't work is really devoid of any intellectual basis whatsoever. It wasn't until that 1950s ish era we had wide-spread problems with teen pregnancies. And it wasn't until about that era people even conceived of wide-spread sex education in the schools. For thousands of years parents taught their kids about sex and the schools stayed out of it. And you know, it wasn't until the era of universal sex ed that we started seeing these problems. But as studies have shown the more abstinence in the context of an understanding and ethic of sex is taught, the more people choose it and the more teens don't get pregnant. In short, abstinence works every time it's tried.
To sum up, in this free country, I'm entitled to educate and implant (for the most part) any religious and ethical idea I see fit in my kids (with obvious exceptions like, say, murder). We should keep it that way. It's time to reverse the trent of making the schools the parents of kids and keeping the parents responsible.
With the large turn-out I've had on my analysis of the Waxman hit-piece on abstinence education, I thought I'd take some time discussing what a real sex-ed program should be:
That's right, nothing. I don't believe schools should be touching sex-ed at all. I think it's a shame we have to ear-mark funding to talk to kids about the fact it might just be a good idea to not have sex instead of teaching them sexual technique and pleasuring in high school. (No joke, the public school where I grew up gave time to how to get your girl to have an orgasm). I'm not going to recover my steps on the Waxman analysis below, but in an ideal world we wouldn't have the federal government dictating funding and program choices to local school boards. Those closest to the kids should be making those decisions, namely the community where the school is.
We shouldn't "legislate morality" is the constant drum beat of the left. Great, I agree. The problem is that any discussion of sex deals with a moral issue. What set of sexual ethics should we encourage our kids to have? Should we teach them about safe sex? Should we teach them about abstinence? I don't believe the government is in any position to address this issue, certainly not the schools. We allow parents to make religious choices for their kids in this country, why can they not make the choice about the sexual ethics they want to teach their kids?
There is program after program about getting parents involved in drug prevention of their kids and rightfully so. There are guides for parents to talk to their kids about alcohol, smoking, and so forth. These programs work and they are rightfully promoted. Parental involvement in their kids lives is critical and crucial for their development. So we trust parents to help keep their kids off drugs, but when it comes to sex we don't trust parents to educate their kids.
I constantly hear this mantra "well kids will do it anyway". You know, it's a funny thing about children. They meet your expectations. You expect them to run around chasing their genitals and treat the genitals of the opposite sex as a goal post, and that's just what they'll do. Maybe, just maybe, we should leave the ethical training to the parents instead of Planned Parenthood, who happens to have a vested financial interest in sexually active kids.
This problem is further exacerbated by the fact the schools want to teach sex-ed but only in the context of safe sex. There isn't any instruction about what sex is (aside of the mechanics) and what it should be. These foundational issues should be there and are essential to a proper sexual ethic. Yeah, telling kids not to have sex without telling them what it's general purpose is won't work. Framing the discussion about the nature and purpose of sex is a little different.
Lastly, this idea that abstinence education doesn't work is really devoid of any intellectual basis whatsoever. It wasn't until that 1950s ish era we had wide-spread problems with teen pregnancies. And it wasn't until about that era people even conceived of wide-spread sex education in the schools. For thousands of years parents taught their kids about sex and the schools stayed out of it. And you know, it wasn't until the era of universal sex ed that we started seeing these problems. But as studies have shown the more abstinence in the context of an understanding and ethic of sex is taught, the more people choose it and the more teens don't get pregnant. In short, abstinence works every time it's tried.
To sum up, in this free country, I'm entitled to educate and implant (for the most part) any religious and ethical idea I see fit in my kids (with obvious exceptions like, say, murder). We should keep it that way. It's time to reverse the trent of making the schools the parents of kids and keeping the parents responsible.
