Health-Class "Exercise": Share Chewed Gum

[Steve_MB]

Students Get Lesson to Chew On: Gum Sharing Disgusts Montgomery Parents, Officials

It was a novel class exercise: Ask a room full of Montgomery County high school students to take turns chewing the same piece of gum.

To demonstrate how sexually transmitted diseases are spread, a visiting speaker invited students to share gum in health classes at four county high schools in December and last month. School officials said a total of about 100 students participated in the lessons, although some declined to chew the gum…

Where do they find people stupid enough to come up with this stuff?

[Ike_Witt]

No shit. They should have just had an orgy.

[WhyNot]

Um…EW! (And I’m as far from a germophobe as you’ll get!)

Anyone else play the Handshake AIDS game? That’s what we did in high school. Everyone got an index card and put it face down on their desk without looking at it. Then we shook hands with five other students. Sat back down and flipped our cards over. One person’s card had a red dot. S/he was “HIV positive”. The teacher told that student to stand up. Then everyone who shook hands with that person stood up. Then anyone who shook hands with any of those people stood up.

Of course, it took very few iterations before everyone was “infected”. It was an impactful lesson without being, y’know…gross.

[don_t_ask]

What, this chancre? I got it from a piece of gum.

[Larry_Mudd]

@Steve MB

Where do they find people stupid enough to come up with this stuff?

I think it’s called a “faith-based initiative.”

Gail Tierney, the executive director of the Rockville Pregnancy Center, is as pro-life as you can get – so pro-life that she’s even strongly anti-condom:

As director of the Rockville Pregnancy Center, I strongly oppose the School Board’s recent vote for teaching condom usage. Statistics from our Center for the past 15 years indicate that approximately 44% of clients become pregnant while their partner used condoms. This is the reality, and not what is listed in the literature.

Condoms provide false hope of protection not only from pregnancy, but from sexually transmitted diseases and infections as well. But most STDs are transmitted by skin-to-skin contact, areas not covered by a condom.

These are dangerous idiots, and some bright boy decided it would be a Good Thing to encourage them to take a bigger role in American public education.

These are people with a sex education curriculum that’s tailor-made for the “Describe it in three words” thread over in MPSIMS.

The gum-chewing makes the news? It’s as safe as milk, next to the whole “discouraging condom use” thing at the center.

[Mama_Tiger]

I’ll have to ask my son if these idiots came in to his health class when he attended a Montgomery County high school – although I can’t imagine he wouldn’t have told me if they’d asked him to do something that gross. Considering how insanely liberal that area is, I cannot believe they let these idiots into the schools for this many years without finding out just how irresponsible their “teachings” are.

[mobo85]

It was up to the students to choose whether or not they wanted to chew the gum. As for the exercise, it’s an interesting look at the old saying “when you sleep with a person, you’re sleeping with everyone they’ve ever slept with.” Of course, the kids who decided to chew the gum are probably the ones who are going to sleep with others no matter what, anyway.