ViaSeth, this is the WTF flag on the top of Mount WTF which I have climbed today wearing my WTF parka:
Helena
school trustees were swamped Tuesday night at a hearing that left many
of the hundreds of parents in attendance standing outside a packed
board room. They urged the school board in this city nestled in the
Rocky Mountains to take the sex education program back to the drawing
board.The
proposed 62-page document covers a broad health and nutrition education
program and took two years to draft. But it is the small portion
dealing with sexual education that has drawn the ire of many in the
community who feel it is being pushed forward despite its obvious
controversial nature.Parents
appeared most worried about pieces of the plan that teaches first
graders about same-gender relationships, fifth graders that sexual
intercourse includes “vaginal, oral, or anal penetration,” and high
school students about erotic art. The curriculum would also teach
kindergartners anatomical terms such as penis, vagina, breast, nipples,
testicles, scrotum and uterus.“They
made this more controversial by adding in all this stuff like
same-gender relationships to small children, teaching body parts to
kindergartners, and teaching erotic art to ninth through 12th graders,”
said Mikal Wilkerson, who has five children in the school system and a
husband who sits on the school board. “They even teach about anxiety
about sexual performance in high school.”
I hate to break it to the Wife of the School Board Member up there, but teenagers are pretty much anxious about sex all the time. About having it, not having it, being good at it, doing it too much, not doing it enough, studs and sluts and all the other stupid shit we load kids up with because we as adults can’t bear to think about how godawful scary growing up was for us so we have to pass it on to them. We have to shove them in a box and resent them for making us think about a time when we didn’t know anything either. We have to make them scared of their own bodies and make everything happening to them an assault by the enemy.
We have to do everything but the easiest thing, which is to get the fuck over ourselves, stop imagining 5-year-olds are gonna have the same thoughts we think when we hear the word “vagina,” and not fuck up the next generation the way we were fucked up. Which means not assuming that kids are stupid, remembering how they’re people with their own agendas, and talking to them honestly and normally instead of with this bullshit “we have to protect you from what you already know, probably, anyway” show-off smuggery.
(And by the way, if we’re worried about freaking teenagers out, is there anything more cringe-inducing to a 14-year-old than the spectacle of your parents telling your whole town and the world and the Internet that they don’t think you’re ready to hear what a blowjob is? Seriously?)
A.
They’re worried about teaching the names ofbody parts to kindergarteners?! I’m worried about kindergarteners who get to the age of four or five and still don’t know the proper names for all their body parts, frankly. Parents who are so squeamish they won’t even use any other words but baby-talk euphemisms for those bits are almost guaranteed to raise the next generation of uptight, repressive, sexual (and otherwise) neurotics.
(I know when I was about that age, my parents gave me these books written for children which had all kinds of information about body parts, sex, and the general “where do babies come from” kind of stuff. There was no “wee-wee” and “hoo-hah” stuff around Chez Interrobang when I was but a wee semicolon.)
I hate to break it to the Wife of the School Board Member up there, but teenagers are pretty much anxious about sex all the time. About having it, not having it, being good at it, doing it too much, not doing it enough, studs and sluts and all the other stupid shit we load kids up with because we as adults can’t bear to think about how godawful scary growing up was for us so we have to pass it on to them.
Amanda had a great tweet yesterday or the day before (I can’t find it now) that teenage relationships were by definition tempestuous and fraught with anxiety and unpredictability.
That’s baseline. So by all means, let’s keep them ignorant and deny them of basic factual knowledge – because that’s sure to help, right? Right?
I’m thrilled at the prospect of a generation of people who could accurately identify a vulva (or even call it a pudendum) as something different from a vagina.
It’s an endless source of frustration to deal with inappropriate and inaccurate terminology when people are seeking medical help. It’s scary to realize that they cannot distinguish body parts enough to receive proper diagnosis and treatment.
Not to mention the precious cuteness of vajayjay.
I will differ in that not all children mentally and emotionally mature at the same rate, so I do dislike a “one size fits all” sex ed. But I agree that any teenager with cable TV has been exposed to a lot already.
I came through the schools right at the time they had to introduce health education (a euphemism for sex ed or was it an attempt to teach total health). It was the biggest joke. Most of the time was learning outdated street names for drugs. Not to mention, the teacher was a very nice albeit naive person. so her teaching this was hilarious.
I just had ice cream with a friend of mine and her sons and the 4 year old had more dick stories than Pat Nixon. After a while she told her son “save the penis talk for the Little Boy Frat House” aka preschool.
is there anything more cringe-inducing to a 14-year-old than the spectacle of your parents…
My 14-year old informed me that all the best 14-year-olds actually don’t have parents. They were grown, on plates of agar, in big petri dishes. And delivered to EK at the age of 5 by UPS…
I’m thrilled at the prospect of a generation of people who could accurately identify a vulva (or even call it a pudendum) as something different from a vagina.
Just so long as they can decline it correctly.Vulva is first declension, pudendum second declension, neuter…