Schools stumble over sex education

Those children were as young as 12 and even if they were 16 it's not what I want taught to my child.

Nothing like sucking the morals right out of a kid!

I read the article, Montana. A few observations.

First, and most importantly, this was a one-day, statewide "conference" that had explicit goals about building gay/straight alliances and, in the parlance of the article, expand homosexual teaching into the lower grades." (I see that as a spin on "address the fact that there are homosexual youth as young as 12 who have questions about sex, just like their heterosexual peers.") The article is not about sex education as it takes place in the schools. It doesn't say anything in the article about consent. It does say that many of the students were "bused in from their home districts". I doubt that something like this would happen without some kind of permission slip. If it didn't, I can see how people are upset. However, again, we are talking about sex education in the schools, and this incident is anamalous -- a one-day event OUTSIDE of any school.

Now, given all of that, I still was not that disturbed at the article when I read between the lines. The authors were clearly scandalized that a 15-year-old girl knew what a clitoris was, enough to draw a diagram of it. For shame!

There is a lot along those lines, but even the central shocker, about fisting, doesn't get me too exercised. A kid asked. His question was answered. I think an atmosphere of openness is vitally important in conveying this kind of information. Kids are curious about this stuff, even if they have no intention of doing it.

Which brings me to the last point -- it is a big jump to go from saying that being educated about something means that you will go and do it. I knew about the vagaries of hetero- and homosexual sex from a very young age, but I only did what was interesting to me, and many many years down the line from when I first learned about it. I think the "risks" of a knowledgeable heterosexual teen experimenting with gay sex and deciding it's not for him or her are far outweighed by the risks of a homosexual teen being taught nothing about his/her own sexuality in "sex ed" classes, the moral judgement implied therein, and the truly risky behavior that is likely to result when ignorance comes up against sex drive. And yes, kids as young as 12 have a sex drive.

Which brings me to my very last point -- there have been numerous studies about the disconnect between what parents think their kids are doing and what their kids are actually doing. (I can find one, if requested.) So you have a parent who refuses to allow their 12-year-old to attend a sex ed class, and teaches only the basics because the kid's 12, after all, it's gross to teach all this other stuff. Meanwhile, the little innocent ignorant 12-year-old comes home pregnant.

I hope that wasn't too strongly worded -- I really am sympathetic to your plight, Montana, and understand how such a horrible experience (Ritalin et al) would color your thinking.

At one of the most exhausting parents-talks I had (quite, exactly in the parish house of the village, I now live since 7 years), we discussed, how old the children had to be, when I went to their [Catholic] youth club.

Most thought, 14 was okay, the vicar was thinking about 16, better older.
Two women, both voluntarily engaged in youth work, were completely against it at all. Both got their first child (and maried) before the age of 18.

We had fairly good biology based sex education at school. looong time ago.

Only recently we were having a conversation about at what age we discovered that gays existed - For my grandmother, she was a grandmother before she even knew! my mother was a mother, i was a teenager and my children were about 9 or less when they told me!

Good sex education should include the facts about homosexuality so that if they are gay, they know that it isn't some terrible thing and can talk about it. Good contraception and prevention of sexually transmitted diseases is essential - it isn't just pregnancy but herpes, chlamidya - which can lead to infertility and all the old 'favourites' of syphillis etc as well as HIV.

No pressure should be put on kids, they should be taught to respect themselves first and foremost and that they are worth more than a quick thrill for someone pressuring them.

Exactly, Vivien. (And Walter. Interesting.)

My final example probably should have been "...with AIDS" or "after having a traumatic sexual experience with an older man" or something less clear-cut than how to avoid pregnancy, as that is probably what is most likely to actually be covered. As Vivien says, all the other stuff, including "icky" stuff, is important, too.

Exactly!

This may be a digression but for the record the Bush administration is pushing for abstinence only education. War and killing good,sex bad.

au, I know what you say is very simplistic, but these truisms seems to escape most conservatives of today. ;(* c.i.

I like this cartoon, by Carl Giles, first published in Daily Express on 18 Oct 1966


"And when I tell you they were probably running off to find a little church don't call me a silly old moo."

Walter, A picture speaks a thousand words.

When I mentioned the gathering, it's not the gay thing that bothered me and thousands of other parent, it's the nature of what is being taught. That gathering was a gay/strait gathering and was meant for all children between the ages of 12 and up. I am not blinded my my own experiences and the schools are the ones who encouraged this.

I've expressed my thoughts and opinions on this subject, so I'll just leave it at that.

looooooooooong post .. lots of digression. started writing it a while ago, so i might double up on what other posters will have written since!



Well, wait, whoa. You're jumping to conclusions almost as quickly as I was ;-).

First off, its true, I 'jumped' as well. I took the sentence "If the parent refuses to teach the child and refuses consent I still think it should be the parents choice" out of context. I now see that the line referred merely and explicitly to sex ed. But I took it as a general assertion, kinda like a theoretical underpinning to the stated opinion on the specific matter of sex ed. Took it as saying that the principle that it's up to a parent what his child learns is so fundamental that, even in the worst-case scenario where a parent wouldnt want his child to be schooled, period, however mistaken a choice that'd be, that should still be the parent's prerogative, because the parent's authority overrides the state's. Now that is a principle I would "strongly" take issue with.

(That's why I've had some discussions with Anastasia about home schooling as well. There's a cultural difference thing going on there, I think. I can see how home schooling could work out fine, if up-to-date teaching materials are used and if there's some kind of testing, certification or something, afterwards, that would serve as a check on whether the kid's in fact acquired the basic knowledge schooling is supposed to instill. But the concept, that also seems to have a place in the US, that a parent should also be free to home-school his child whatever curriculum he pleases, in whichever way he deems fit, with no oversight or check-up at the end whatsoever, that's just ... beyond me. To a European, that just seems wrong. Its like - home nursing by a family member is fine, but only if the doctor gets to check up on the patient sometimes as well. If the family member insists on locking out the doctor altogether, make his/her own diagnosis, medicine prescriptions etc, then the individual is at risk, and perhaps others, indirectly, are as well, and authorities should intervene).

Anyway, seeing that the sentence was still specifically about sex ed, I still disagree with it, just not as strongly ;-). Do I disagree because I "think schools are less likely to make stupid educational choices than parents are"? Hmm. Its sure not what I said, though its an interesting question. What I said, in fact, was that if a parent would choose to make an obviously stupid educational choice that threatens to harm the child, the school should be allowed to counter this choice by providing complementary/alternative input.

I think the phrasing of the principle that "what the parents want their children to learn [should] take precedence over what the school wants children to learn - mistaken or not" is misleading, in this context. Because yes, if its an either/or situation, in principle precedence should be the parents', but learning never is an either/or situation. What the school teaches the kids can not take the place of what parents teach them - it can at most be additional info. So what that sentence really intends to convey is: "if the parents decide their children should NOT learn something, this should take precedence over what the school wishes to teach children - whether the parents are mistaken or not". Now that sounds different, doesnt it?

Considering there are enough parents who, for example, loosely brandish rifles around their children, encourage them to "try them out" and consider boasting about their use a macho pride thing; considering there are enough parents who smoke weed around their kids without conditionalising its use with warnings, making it seem like the most normal, risk-free thing; and yes, considering there are enough parents who prefer giving their children a sermon about hell & damnation awaiting them, should they ever have sex or "dirty thoughts", over informing them about the ways in which they can protect themselves against the lethal disease that's doing the rounds should they go there in any case, I'd say its a good thing that schools teach pupils about the risks of gun violence, the risks of drug use, and the risks of un-safe sex, yes. Especially in these cases where the parents refuse to give this information.

I mean - of course I think that schools should never say, "your parents are wrong", or: "this is the real truth", or anything. Phrasing should be careful. If the parents teach their children that God created Man in seven days, the child should never be told that's wrong. But fersure the teacher would be doing a good thing when he points out, in his biology or history or whatnot lesson, that many people believe Man evolved from [etc]. It's a theory the child will have to know, at least, even if he will decide not to believe it.

I think of the sex ed issue along much the same lines. The school should not tell the kids what is right, or what they should do. But they can plot out the different alternatives, especially where parents might have chosen only to tell them the one thing. You can abstain. You can use condoms. Listen to your parents, but if you don't, at least take the alternative safe route we have warned you about. Like that, kinda. (**see next post)

This is not about indoctrination. In fact, I dont get where the allegation of 'indoctrination' comes in, here. If the parents say X and the school suggests Y, the pupil can make up his own mind, right? To my mind, its when the parent insists that the school does not have the right to suggest Y, because it is their parental right to limit the information their child receives to only X, that the word 'indoctrination' appears relevant ..

Again, this is (as I see it) about a basic sense that children are not the property of parents. They are also their own (little) persons, and citizens in their own right, with their own rights (I thought Walter's post about the US being one of two only countries in the world that have not signed the UN-convention of rights of children was thought-provoking). Parents do not have the exclusive right to decide what children get to hear, see or do - I mean, we all have the responsibility to look out for the kids in our community, no? Parents are only human, and are as fallible as anyone, after all, and if we see that a child in our (school, church, neighbourhood) community misses out on something essentially important, or is threatened by harm, we're going to see if there's any way for us to compensate for what is going wrong within the nuclear family, right?

Again, there could be a cultural difference here, I guess. "We" are, still, slightly more collectivist and tend to think slightly more in terms of community responsibility, while "you" (or so the stereotype holds) are the world's most averse to any outside interference in individual business. That puts "you" (or both of us, b/c Europe is the closest to the US when the comparison is worldwide) in a risky situation, though. We put a lot of stock in the nuclear family. In other parts of the world, there at least is a very involved extended family exercising social control. In the West, America specifically, the nuclear family is at its most separated from any "looking in" from the outside.

I was really surprised, talking with Anastasia, to what extent a family can duck all outside oversight in the States. You don't register with your city, right, when you move? In The Netherlands, everyone's address is registered (so you can always be found back, unless you duck into illegality). And if you move, your records would be sent after you, to your new doctor, your new school. From her I heard how families in the US can simply move from place to place, starting from scratch in a new state whenever teachers or doctors would start to get concerned about their kids, and thus abuse can fester on forever. It happens, probably more often than you think.

Thats the second difference in perspective, probably. I'm simply much more pessimistic about the 'natural' self-sufficiency and self-correction of the nuclear family, I guess, than you, Thomas. I.e., when you write:



that sounds slightly naive to me. I mean, sure, thats how it goes for healthy families, and its a logical enough assertion. But its not something we can assume.

Listen, the single biggest source of harm to today's kids (as probably at any time in history :-( ) is inside the family home. Forget anon child molesters hiding in the bushes - if a child gets mistreated or abused, it is most likely by his/her parents or other members of the family. And yes, teachers, priests, scout leaders etc come in second, be it at a long distance. Though you would hope that parents have the larger stake in their children's wellbeing and are thus the most likely to know whats best for them, the sheer numbers of children that are deprived of even basic security, let alone proper education and preparation for life, in the family home proves that we can not just assume, as a rule of thumb, that 'parents will naturally know best'. Proves that making that assumption a matter of principle is dangerous, even.

I really think the number of cases in which things go wrong in the family home are so massive that it should make us realise that it is time to share the responsibility, to spread the responsibility, a little bit more, especially in this transient world in which extended families are scattered over many states, and its really just mom and dad, if even both of those. I sure know I'll want all the help I can get when I become a parent .. The more people share in educating, informing and empowering children, the more the risk is contained. Thats what "it takes a village" means to me, and I hadnt even really realised until reading this thread, that that notion could actually well be considered controversial or threatening in America.

**[note to last post] This even holds for the link Montana included. Sure, its a pretty hefty example. The fisting example sure was extreme. That definitely should have been a voluntary thing to attend, and the kids should have been told beforehand what kind of information would be given out there, so they could choose to leave it be if they werent ready for it. But I also noticed that even in this indignant report, almost all the examples that are described of stuff the educators told the pupils about, were about things the attending pupils asked about. Even the fisting example came from the "pause [in which] all of the teenagers could write down questions for the homosexual presenters". This is stuff that many of the participating pupils apparently wanted to know about, like it or not. I sure wish I'd been as well informed when I was 20 as today's teenagers are, but I wont disagree that this is, indeed, an ultimate example of the kind of thing parents should be informed about and have a say in. Crucially, though, the "in a nutshell" allegation that it shows how "the homosexual community [..] promotes sexual activity by teenagers" and "the schools [are] encouraging teenagers to be sexually active" seems just plain wrong, going on what the article says. There is a distinct difference between telling kids something is normal, that one doesnt need to be ashamed about it, and telling them that they should go out and do it themselves, right now.

h
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[Sorry about all the weirdness with the double posts just now ... there was some DB error, said I should try again in a few minutes, so I did, but in the meantime it turned out that my messages had already posted, so ... well, y'know, STUFF ;-). (arrrgh)]

There is either a double standard being applied here or you've come to a conculsion that simply isn't true.

You mention that people in the Netherlands have to register when they move or slip into "illegality" but the same is true with schooling here in the US. A parent can't simply withdraw their child from school and not have them educated without also "falling into illegality" here. Every state in the US requires that children under the age of 16 attend a public or private school or be home schooled through a state approved program (and every state's home schooling system DOES require testing and evaluations by people from teh local educational establishment.). Failing to enroll your child here is just as illegal as failing to register when you move there.

When a child changes schools here the school that they enroll in requests copies of their school records from the school they were attending previoulsy. If the records request doen't come in within 30 to 45 days the first school is usually required to notify the police in their state and they have specific police officers (aka "Truant Officers") whose job it is to track down those children and ensure that they are enrolled in an approved schooling system somewhere.



Thought provoking indeed but not entirely relevant here since Article 26 of the UN's Universal Declaration of Human Rights already covers the issue and the US did sign that as well as reaffirmed it by siging the Helsinki Final Act of the Conference on Security and Cooperation in Europe.

You might note though that subparagraph (c) of that article clearly states "Parents have a prior right to choose the kind of education that shall be given to their children." Your view seems to contradict with that statement.

That "fistgate" story really is the strangest thing - I mean, apart from the obvious strangeness about the event and its subsequent outing, also the follow-up to it is riddled with contradictions.

First off, Google for "fistgate", or even just for "Margot Abels", and you'll find scores and scores of outraged postings on obscure right-wing rant sites and newsletters, full of warnings about "The Gay Agenda" and "Liberals Normalising Pedophilia". But surprisingly, there seems to be have been hardly any attention for the case on potentially sympathetic sites, such as GLBT platforms (not if you add "gay rights" or "sex education" to the google terms either), which does suggest the episode was experienced as something of an embarassment. Yet there seems to have been hardly any mainstream media articles about it either, apart from the tabloid press, even though the political fallout was significant.

After all, two presenters who had been especially explicit at the workshop, Abels and Netherland (both of whom had just months before been presented with AIDS Action Committee "awards in recognition of their school-based HIV education work"), were fired, respectively forced to resign, by Education commissioner Driscoll. Abels, however, sued and was "vindicated" when she won her job back, with back pay, when the arbitrator ruled in her favour. Furthermore, GOP Mass. Governor Cellucci "publicly supported the conference", stating "that meeting with parents' rights groups to talk about it would be 'a waste of time'", and subsequently "doubled funding for the GCGLY from $750,000 to $1.5 million". A year later he was nominated as the new ambassador to Canada by George Bush, and appointed as such by the Senate despite a vigorous campaign by Mass. "family rights groups".

The reports also do not seem to make quite clear who was at the conference. The scandalised reports suggest there were scores of young teenagers, who were thus exposed to "porn education". The far-left Workers World turns the description around when noting that "t was supposed to be anonymous and allow young people a confidential and safe space to ask questions. But when a few adults asked to sit in on the session, the youths voted to let them stay. One of those adults was Brian Cammeker, executive director of the right-wing group Parents' Rights Coalition, which opposes sex education in schools. Cammeker secretly taped the workshop. A carefully edited version was then sent to the media." Yet Canada's "Report" describes the scene as including a mere "dozens" of teenagers while "the conference was attended by scores of teachers and administrators".

Boston in Bitter Fight Over Gay Youth Seminar
Diplomatic fisticuffs
Boston: Labor, Community Fight Anti-Gay Firings

Thanks Fishin' for all the information! That clears up a lot. I must admit I found it kinda hard to believe it wouldnt be like that ... glad to see that reality is more nuanced than what I'd heard! I'd taken my cue from Anastasia's insistence that something like the obligatory registration with local authorities here "would never fly in America" ... I found it weird that somebody could really just "disappear", then, in America, only to be traced back through his drivers license - but I guess it's not really that easy, then! Good ;-).



More useful information, thanks yet again. Why is it, do you think, the US did not sign the UN convention on childrens' rights (apparently), though? (Or is that really getting too off-topic?)



Heh. Well, "the kind of education" is a very abstract kind of phrase ... I'd choose a Montessori kind of education for my children, for example ;-). I can now see how home schooling (something I hadnt even heard of before Anastasia told me about it) could well work, under the conditions you describe, as well. Well, et cetera. But no, I am not in favour of granting each parent individually the right to exclude his/her child from this or that item of the curriculum they don't agree with - true. Next up, Christian parents dont want their children to learn about evolutionism, Muslim parents dont want their daughters to do PE classes, etc etc ...

OK, and now I'll stop hogging this thread! Sorry, Au ...