more on sex ed

Yesterday, what I quoted from a public school sex ed curriculum is just a sample. I will give you one more and then that’s all.

From Focus on Kids, teachers guide, University of Maryland Department of Pediatrics:

State that there are other ways to be close to a person and show you care without having sexual intercourse. Ask youth to brainstorm ways to be close. The list may include holding hands, body massage, bathing together, masturbation, sensuous feeding, fantasizing, watching erotic movies, reading erotic books and magazines…

As a parent, I have spoken to my children about sexuality frequently. I teach others, as well, including a sex ed curriculum with 5th grade boys and their fathers each year. Every one gets all psyched for “The Talk!” But…

Somehow, we never got to that list above. Though we do talk about responsibility, character, appropriate intimacy and such. We talk about how God designed our sexuality. How we are the same. How we are different. Frankly, we talked about anything we wanted to!

Presently, you can’t do that in a public school. Parent involvement is pretty much limited to a form you have to fill out at the beginning of the year that states you don’t want the school giving your kid condoms. If you don’t fill out the form, students receive the condoms as requested. Obviously, you are never notified of this either.

There is an article in the Washington Post today with critics of the abstinence education for sex ed. Why are we spending so much money on that program?

Actually we spend 12 times as much on contraceptive based sex ed programs in schools than on abstinence programs. Also, I mention again the 40% drop in out of wedlock births with students who have made pledges in an abstinence type program.

All right, so what to all of this?

If parents and church promote healthy sexual discussion and inform children in age appropriate ways the nuances of who we are as men and women and the gift of sexuality, including the sacred intimacy of husband and wife, then you will have the best of all worlds. Without parental support, or no church affiliation, then school is next in the line of discussion and information in our society.

Abstinence education, coupled with information about STD’s and birth control done with decorum and set in the ideal for sake of discussion might be the best chance we have in a public school. By “set in the ideal,” I mean when you are talking about birth control, for example, use language like, “Some married couples choose to prevent pregnancy by using a condom. Here is what they look like, etc…” How we teach has a great impact along with what we teach. The sexual activity of teenagers is way lower than what the media portrays and so a good place to start is simply making clear that “everyone isn’t doing it.”