No, the bottom line is that it’s a public health issue.

Simple fact of the matter is that if a child is poorly educated in any subject matter, whether sex and human reproduction or history, it is the responsibility of the parent. Parents are supposed to make sure that their children receive a proper education whether it be teaching the child themselves or making sure that the educators are doing their job.

That is the bottom line!!!

Buuut of course society will never let it fly.

Unfortunately I can’t remember who it was by, but I remember a brilliant book which dealt with tons of different issues that kids might ask questions about – sex, drugs, colour, bullying, disability etc, and then presented a sort of stock answer to each question for ages 3-5, 6-8, and 9-12. I think in a debate like this, it could be a good illustration.

i found a great book, called ‘it’s not the stork’, geared for kids 4 and up, which is basic, and what i pictured being taught in saunder’s system…all about bodies, proper names, how babies are made, and even good touches vs bad touches…yeah…i can see how that is dangerous to teach kids…

wonderful post, cara!

“That people are so unable to seperate “sexual being” with “being who it is okay for me to fuck” is the problem, here.”

Exactly. I also think it’s extraordinary that people imagine that simply being told about the theory of something will immediately make students go and do it. The opposite attitude is evident when it comes to teaching children about anything else that involves dangers: war, genocide, racism, drugs, debt, road safety etc. The anti-sex-ed crowd always sound to me like the direct equivalent of saying: “We shouldn’t have school fire drills, because it will encourage kids to burn the school down.”

Don’t go stapling condoms to handouts, though. The Ministry of Health did that in South Africa with not-very-hilarious results. A bit of sellotape does the job.

It’s not really my story. When I first started volunteering with Planned Parenthood, I met a woman who is the head of the education department out here in the boonies. And she was talking about how a few weeks before, she was doing an evening educational program for parents about how to talk to their kids about sex. She started with an introductory video, which included a lot of the stuff I wrote about in this post — that while children don’t have sexual desire, they do know what feels good and masturbate, this is natural and something that you shouldn’t discourage except to teach them that it’s something that should be done in private, etc.

This was a group of people who came to a program that they knew was by Planned Parenthood (which means they were probably liberal enough to want and expect more than abstinence only shit), wanting to learn about how to talk about sex with their children of varying ages. But while the educational director was running the video, over half the audience just got up and left.

The worst part? When I expressed surprise, she just looked back at me like she was surprised and told me that she expects it now. Apparently, it happens regularly. My best guess? That she puts the video on first to weed out everyone who will only be a disruption while she actually tries to teach people something.

G-ddess forbid we should ever raise children to have a sense of their own bodily autonomy. We can’t do that, because that would interfere with the mission of the schools – to destroy self-determination and self-identity, and turn out more sheeple. /sarcasm