"To what purpose are powers limited, and to what purpose is that limitation committed to writing,
if these limits may, at any time, be passed by those intended to be restrained?"
-- Chief Justice John Marshall, Marbury v. Madison, 1803

Monday, October 17, 2005

Faced with “the highest [teen pregnancy rates] in the state, according to most recent data” and “an even higher pregnancy rate in many areas that make up the school district,” one Michigan school district has decided to forego federal “abstinence-only” funding in order to be able to teach a normal sex-ed class to their students.

Students who are taking the health class, which is an elective this year, seem positive about the course.

Asia Virgil, 14, a freshman, said after the lesson Wednesday that she’ll be a “51-year-old virgin.”

“Learning stuff like this makes ya not want to do it,” she said.

Junior Breyden Hoffman said the class teaches kids how to avoid pregnancy.

“It helps me learn about periods and sex organs,” said Kenneth Smith, 14. “I think they should even show us pictures of fetuses to really know what the baby looks like.”

Longtime readers of this site will know that I am a believer in teaching abstinence in schools, but only as part of a broad-based sex-ed curriculum.  I think there is enough empirical data to show that teaching abstinence is indeed a good thing, but I think the idea that making kids ignorant about sexual matters by simply ignoring them is beyond ludicrous.  I don’t really have any major objection to making this type of class an elective to allay the concerns of überconservative parents who would rather their kids not be exposed to this type of thing, but I really question the sanity of refusing to teach kids about birth control and how sex works.  The Ugandan A-B-C model is a good basis, I think, for what a comprehensive sex-ed curriculum in the US should look like.

Update: Here’s a related article.  Faced with a shortage of factual information from home or school, kids are turning to the one place where they learn everything else:  the internet.

The Internet apparently is a key source of sex education — and miseducation — for U.S. teenagers. About half of teens go online for health information, and they have more questions about sex than they do about any other topic, researchers reported at the American Academy of Pediatrics meeting here last week.

The answers given at adolescent health sites range from the scientifically sound to dangerous falsehoods, says Dina Borzekowski, who specializes in media and children’s health at Johns Hopkins University in Baltimore.

I don’t know about the rest of you, but I’d much rather my kids learn about reproductive matters from a teacher with a specific curriculum than to learn abstinence-only at school and then have them learning about sex from the internet.  That is, unless you want your kid to think that teen lesbians, group sex, bestiality, interracial facials, hot fatties, and piss play are all part of a normal, healthy sex life.

Update 2: I fixed the broken link at the top of the page.  Apologies.  And how come non of you bastards told me about it?  Huh?  HUH??