This is funny - a teacher being hauled over the coals for teaching 14 year olds about the nuts and bolts (no puns intended) of sex. Can we all agree that at 14 years of age, kids have seen and heard (and probable done) more about sex than most 40 year olds, thanks to the illustrious, ubiquitous internet? Oh, sorry, the teacher overstepped his boundaries - he’s supposed to leave parents their illusions that their kids are all pure and ignorant.
If these parents ever heard a tape of some of the conversations their precious little “virgin” daughters have, their heads would explode.
:eek:
And now you’ve convinced me to stop doing it. 
Regarding ratings: Like I said in another thread in which I used the term overzealously, meh. If it really pisses off the intelligentsia here that much, I’m willing to abandon the idea of tongue-in-cheek rating RO-threads, but at the very least I think RO should be introduced as a legitimate board abbreviation.
Um, wow. Apparently silenus and featherlou were never 14 themselves. Teenagers aren’t as well informed as you two seem to think, and frankly, even if they are, they don’t exactly need it repeated in a sex-ed. course. After all, the purpose of a sex-ed. course is to teach kids how to be safe, not how to do new and cool sex positions. But that should have been blatantly obvious to you both.
Here’s the guide the kiddies were given. There’s a link to the masturbation “help site” there, but I don’t think Jackinworld is exactly worksafe, so I’m not linking to it directly.
So they either they don’t know what they’re doing, and shouldn’t be told—or they already know all about it, and shouldn’t be told?
But how else are kids going to be kept up-to-date on the newest and coolest positions?
You are correct, of course. In the United States, at least, sex education (when it manages to be taught at all) seems to consist largely of imploring kids not to do it, and enumerating all the horrible things that will happen to them if they do. All in the hope that the children will grow up as clueless, frightened, and emotionally stunted as their parents were, until they figure it out on their own.
To answer your question upthread, no, I don’t see anything inherently wrong with discussing sexual positions (or at least their existence) with 14-year-olds. Why the hell not? I presume there are no live demonstrations. Calling it a “how-to” guide is just hyperbole; there are no diagrams showing Slot A and Tab B. If the “guide” shown in elfkin477’s link is accurate, I really don’t see what the outrage is.
Then again, if you do have a problem with that kind of frankness about sex, you can take heart, because you’re in extremely good company. And I expect it to remain so in this country, generation after generation.
No, I have to disagree with the OP. There is a reason we differentiate between ages, and this is one of them. I would have been right up in the face of the teacher. It is not his place to try to tell kids how to have great sex. Those are minors, by legal definition incapable of adult decisions on the topic (and many adults have proven they’re incapable as well). He’s lucky he didn’t get punched out by one of the more ardent dads.
And if you had your way, you’d keep 'em that way, I gather?
Have you ever wondered why the US has one of the highest teen pregnancy and teen STD rates in the developed world? And why cultures who don’t treat sexuality as some sort of hideous poison are doing far better?
I’m as against RO ratings as anyone, but I’m willing to make an exception in this case.
God people are fucked up about sex. I could beat the ever-loving shit out of someone and get into less legal trouble than if I whip my dick out in public.
Anyway, it’s probably pointless to teach about sexual positions. Just tell the kids they can find out information on that online, if they truly want to know more. Teach them about what sex is, about possible dangers, and hopefully enough about the entire subject of courting, taboos, etc. that they realize that the Puritanical stance is not the only possible one with regards to fucking. It’s a big world, and an old one, and lots of people have fucked a lot in a lot of different ways and for a lot of different reasons.
I find your ideas intriguing and wish to subscribe to your newsletter.
I was kidding about the crying thing BTW, and now I feel bad if that’s actually happening to anyone who reads this thread. Although I can’t help but admit that the page Autolycus linked to is funny as hell (cry whacker indeed).
When I was in 8th grade my school had to get permission slips from parents before they would even say the word “sex” in class, let alone teach us anything about “sex education”.
Even my very religious, conservative parents thought this was ridiculous.
I’m torn on this one. Based on the link provided by elfkin477, I think the teacher went a little TMI. About half of the questions are more than I think a mixed group of goofy teens needs to discuss.
However, when I was a 14, my best had no idea about sex or sexual slang. So when stupid guys would be all “Do you give good head?” “Interested in a little nob?” or whatever, she would say yes. :eek: This is when I discovered that her parents hadn’t given her any kind of “talk” and that she wasn’t even sure about her own parts, let alone about sex in general. I, being the awesome friend that I was, gave her my own talk…very graphic it was.
My daughters knew all about sex, including oral sex and masturbation, way before they were 13. But not everyone is that open with their kids*.
*I guess most folks don’t teach their kids not to get into mom’s nightstand by giving a lecture on the appropriate uses of condoms. That’ll learn them.
At least the event inspired a good username.
I think the linked list would be more acceptable in high school, but I do think 8th grade is pushing it. I might quietly distribute the first half of the list, but to have them read the second part ALOUD is just beyond stupid. These kids embarrass so easily. They are so fragile, and while I wish we could all get over that, it’s really not this guys place to push it. It’s highly unlikely that he himself even has children at this age, to know the probable developmental stage they’re at. The curriculum was written by people who do, and while I get that it’s awfully conservative, this was too far in the other direction for my taste. If my 8th grade son (not a hypothetical son) was in this class, I would make my displeasure known, but I wouldn’t be calling for him to lose his job. I’d let him know I thought it inappropriate, and hope that he’d change his materials next year.
You know what I wish they WOULD include in sex ed at this age:
[ul]Sex makes relationships complicated. Practice relationships for a while before throwing sex into the equation.[/ul]
[ul]Sex makes some people fall in love and others fall out of it.[/ul]
[ul]Sex can hurt.[/ul]
[ul]It’s perfectly fine to bring other people to orgasm without intercourse. (My talks with teens these days has revealed that this is much more acceptable these days. A girl who only gives oral or manual orgasms is not automatically branded “a tease”.)[/ul]
[ul]Pregnancy makes you fat and your skin break out. You’ll probably get stretch marks all over that never disappear completely and make belly rings look awful. [/ul]
[ul]Your friends, yes, even your best friends, will disappear once you have a baby. It’s not because they don’t like you - it’s because they are free teenagers and you’re not. They will NOT understand that you need a week’s notice to line up a babysitter before you can spontaneously go to a movie or a concert,they will think you’re blowing them off. [/ul]
[ul]Your baby isn’t as adorable to everyone else as it is to you. To most people, your baby is a symbol that you are young and stupid and can’t be trusted.[/ul]
It not my intent to scare kids out of having sex, but to give them some honest information about what being sexually active at their age is risking. The emotional implications of young sex are totally ignored by every sex ed curriculum I’ve ever seen, and that, IMHO, is a huge mistake.
(Why yes, I *was *pregnant at 17.)
I don’t have any kids, so I don’t actually know what 14 year olds know about sex. I’m just assuming that they can find the same shit on the internet that I can find without any effort at all (oh yeah, you do have to click that you are indeed over 18 - I guess that is keeping them all out of the XXX-rated stuff :rolleyes: ). Back when I was 14, a looooong time ago, I had to find dirty books in the library (Harold Robbins, I’m looking at you); I didn’t have any of this easy access to porn 24 hours a day. I think it is safe to assume the kids know FAR more about sex than you think they do, and a sex-education course that actually gives them some real, concrete information sounds like a good thing to me. These kids grew up on computers; what kind of links do you think they’re sending each other?
If they don’t learn factual stuff about sex at school, where should they learn it? In mis-information sessions after school with their friends? The hard way, like most of us learned it? From porn movies? The knee-jerk reaction is that a classroom setting sounds like a terrible place for them to learn about sex, but think about it - it’s a non-threatening environment, everyone is getting the same information, there is no hiddenness or shame to it; if they see sex treated factually, they might have a chance of losing some of the emotional baggage of it themselves and making good, healthy decisions for themselves. But that doesn’t seem to be what parents want for their children regarding sex. I don’t know what parents want - for their kids to never have sex? To only have sex once they’re married, and somehow magically turn their attitude towards sex around 180 degrees overnight? For their kids to have a better attitude towards sex than they themselves were taught, but to not actually have them exposed to any factual sex talk?
Yes, content aside, it sounds like this guy didn’t exactly put a ton of effort into planning out this lesson. Especially given this:
My sex ed classes were pretty tame but the teachers always made it into more of a discussion-style thing rather than lectures. In the larger classes, the teacher at least presented in natural speech rather than reading off slides. I mean, if you want kids to be comfortable with talking about sex, well, you try to set up the lesson to make them more comfortable. Its expected for 8th graders to be shy about these things in a mixed class. If he didn’t have the time to plan the lesson out better and reading-aloud was the best idea he had, then he should have stuck with the textbook or other materials written specifically for that age group.
First of all, let me point out that I have a pretty decent (albeit anecdotal) sense of what teenagers know about sex because I’m only 18. Secondly, I know that what I have learned in the last four years about sex, both from the SDMB and elsewhere, is not anything that it is important for me to know. I frankly was pretty bored in our sex-ed. classes in elementary and junior high school, but I do know that the point of them was to encourage healthy behaviors (heck, the classes are called “Health”, as often as not).
Yes, kids should learn about sex at school - how to keep safe. I truly do not understand why you think it’s even vaguely reasonable for a school to teach its students how to get more pleasure out of sex. (surely you realize that’s what porn is for.)
Actually, you’re feeding into the arguments that some religious folks use against sex education - i.e., that it encourages kids to practice what both they and the law consider undesirable behaviors*. Normal sex ed. is around because the government/schools don’t want teenagers getting STDs or having babies or getting poor self esteem, etc. - it’s a utilitarian measure that does not amount to encouragement or approval. What this teacher was teaching? Yeah, it’s a little different.
*Age of consent is generally higher than 14 in the US - tends to be 16yo, IIRC. In the interest of full disclosure, I should point out that I’m a Christian myself, but I am absolutely for sex education. I should also point out that the main objector in the article to the teacher’s actions was a pro-education group.
When I was in seventh grade, our math teacher was apparently a bit ahead of his curriculum, so he decided to kill a day by handing out a behavior and relationship survey out of Cosmopolitan.
The only specific thing I remember was that one of the first questions was “Would you leave the bathroom door open so your significant other can see you peeing?”
He hastily retrieved the surveys within a couple of minutes of distributing them, making very little comment. Apparently he had barely given the thing a cursory review before putting them in our hands. Very odd.
Sadly, we were a poorly focused bunch of monkeys, so most people initially sort of blew off the task, leaving it unread on their desks (“OMG! lookit all da words!” etc), so only I and a couple of the other more diligent students actually looked at the paper and realized something was amiss. Sad, because the potential for mass chaos was so great. I wish he’d tried to read the questions aloud; penis would certainly have ensued.