Good article but it took me awhile to get past the ugly babies.

Well, here’s the sticking point.  You can only demand so much control over what the kids actually hear in the class, because a great deal of the curriculum is inevitably going to come from the teacher.  Sticking a relaxed unmarried 20-something teacher in the class will get you a more liberal education than having the course taught by an evangelical southern baptist who never really dated.

No matter what is in the actual course material, liberal teachers won’t shy away from talking about the kinkiest kinds of sex.  Conservative teachers won’t want to even mention the word “condom”.  Having seen both ends of the spectrum going through middle and high school, I find that the actual text book gives you maybe 10-20% of the course, another 20-30% going to the old informational videos, and the rest made up largely of the teacher’s personal experiences and anecdotes.

Abstinence Education policies were a problem largely because they tried to limit what the teacher was allowed to teach.  But, again, this was a federal mandate that did far less to influence what actually got taught than - say - a hyper protective school board or a bunch of free love hippies on the PTA.

Your article was the best thing on that site.  Seriously, the side bar listed an article about tank top hording as news.

Wow.  That sounds horrible.  I don’t have any horror stories nearly that bad.

Well, it may be the coach meant that once genital warts were visible, you’d probably passed the body fluids carrying the infection.

But seriously, is there actually a way to screen out health teachers who have no respect for women whatsoever?

Beggars can’t be choosers.

Thanks, Ms Kate.

Zif, yes and no.  A lot of what the government funding goes to is programs, not schools, and they develop curricula that teachers and schools can use, or more commonly, come to the schools to do the programs. They also do community education outside of schools.  So while teacher discretion is an element, it’s not as all-consuming as you’d initially suppose.

That was a good post for a lighter general-interest blog.  Generally when you can break something down into 2-5 categories that people can easily understand, that works well, and your taxonomy of sex education programs is nice. 

Are there still sex education programs that actively try to argue that condoms aren’t really worth using?  That’s what I had in high school in North Carolina.  If those are gone it’s a good thing for the world.

I hadn’t realized that David Obey came over to the side of justice and righteousness!  Happy day.

Thanks for the post! Anyway, You heard of Lance Armstrong? A single mother raised Lance in Texas. He won the Iron Kids triathlon at the young age of 13 and became a professional triathlete at only 16. Often times, his long Saturday rides would take him over the Oklahoma border so that he had to call his mother to come pick him up. Before Lance even graduated from high school, he had a Rolodex filled with potential sponsors. He qualified to train with the U.S. Olympic developmental team his senior year in high school, and then qualified for the 1989 Junior World Championships the following summer. By 1991, Armstrong was the U.S. National Amateur Champion, and was well on his way to becoming the living legend that he is today.

Are there still sex education programs that actively try to argue that condoms aren’t really worth using?  That’s what I had in high school in North Carolina.  If those are gone it’s a good thing for the world.

Did your’s have the teacher also saying that the only form of “contraception” needed was a contract women carried around that they would have any potential sexual partner sign agreeing to marry and/or pay for child support?

You might want to look into/add to the advocacy of the OWL (Our WHole Lives) program.  It’s a joint venture between the UU’s and the UUC’s, and it’s a great program.  I’d link to something with more information, but there isn’t a whole lot on the net. http://www.uua.org/religiouseducation/curricula/ourwhole/

It’s a great program, and although I know it would never fly as done for public schools, it’s still worth putting up there as an example of a good sex ed program.

Ha, no, D. 

We were all herded into the gym where a charismatic black guy dunked a basketball and then told us that condoms had a one in five failure rate.  He then drew the conclusion that sex with a condom would give you a one in five chance of getting AIDS.