Why playing ostrich doesn’t work
August 6th, 2008
Ah, sexual education curriculum in the public schools. Few things stir up the level of impassioned debate as much as that sentence alone.
Today’s paper is reporting on a proposed change in MPS aimed at drastically cutting the birth rate among teenagers in the city by starting with a comprehensive sex education curriculum in fourth grade. To that, I say bravo. (Although the proposal is far from implementation — it still must receive the seal of approval of the Board of Ed. and teachers trained.)
I vaguely remember, in eighth grade health, discussion about the reproductive system. In tenth grade, although I was in a different school district, our school promoted an abstinence-only curriculum formed around materials produced by James Dobson of Focus on the Family. (And yes, I attended public schools.)
Questions weren’t welcomed or addressed. Topics such as homosexuality, contracting STDs, and the specifics of practices other than intercourse were relegated to the sidelines, and the official policy of the school district was that teachers were not allowed to discuss such subjects with the students, even if the students brought the questions up themselves.
Check out that article again, especially the sidebar: the first bullet point says it all.
A little under half of Wisconsin’s high-schoolers have had sex, according to the state’s 2007 Youth Risk Behavior Survey.
I remember that video in tenth grade. “Not everyone’s having sex,” it said. You’re the only one who is thinking about it, you dirty, dirty teenager.
Sticking your head in the sand doesn’t work. When schools withhold valuable, preventative, comprehensive information from their students, the schools are failing to provide the necessary education for success. We have myriad problems in this country surrounding parenting, childhood and adolescent development. We absolutely need to work on ensuring children are raised in stable, two-parent households. We definitely need to ensure parents have the tools and resources necessary to raise their children, fulfilling their end of the bargain. But part of that toolbox is compulsory education, and we need to be certain our public education systems aren’t leaving the future generation in the dark, simply because we as a society are uncomfortable with the subject material.
