Friday, December 22, 2006
Bad (Sex) Education
filed under: State of Sex Ed by Melissa Gira
I don’t mean to be on a kick of documenting the “stupid” of sex, but some quotes, you just can’t let slide when they float across your newsreader:
“I never had a class in my life on that and it doesn’t take a rocket scientist to figure it out,” board member Bill Schumacher said at Monday’s school board meeting, adding he wonders if eighth-grade is too soon for such matters.
The matter that Bill Schumacher presumes even rocket scientists are so schooled in (though I can’t point to that data at the moment, and am not sure it even exists) is how to use a condom.
Apparently the eighth graders in his district in Cowlitz County, Washington are showing “skyrocketing” STI rates, and the school’s Superintendent would like to re-instate instruction in condom use, which was cut from the middle school curriculum two years ago. The County Health Department is for it, the health teachers are for it — pretty much anyone who has actual contact with actual people facing questions around how to have sex and stay safe.
Aside from making me want to go find the numbers on how many school administrators know how to use a condom properly — again, like ‘rocket scientists,’ an under-studied population — in order to make a point, that we are so quick to scrutinize how easy-to-control and traditionally disempowered folks have sex — like young people, queer folks, young men of color, the incarcerated, and sex workers — really, I’m just yearning in general for less of these stories to document on a daily basis.
Santa, screw the stocking-stuffers — just send me the good sex ed news.
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