Thursdays, round at my place.
speaking as your attorney (pace Hunter Thompson,) I recommend you rethink this.
Although I am VERY secular, I think that’s a good message. Sex isn’t evil. Sex is wonderful and a very special thing. It should be treated as sacred. Not as a “Praise Jesus” type sacredness, but more of a Kama Sutra sacredness.
I think too that more learning about good quality relationships would be a good idear. SO many teens don’t really know what a good quality relationship even IS!
Actually, many people in general don’t know what a good quality relationship even IS. Like they think that getting a significent other is completly seperate from how you make other friends. One of the things that my parents taught me is that the foundation of love, and a good long lasting marriage is being best friends with your significent other.
I know I read also (can’t rememebr where) that a significent number of teen pregnancies are fathered by males in their twenties! We’re not just talking about older teens…we’re talking about 14-15 year old girls…girls who are just beginning to understand what makes up a good healthy loving relationship.
This is, at least according to the teachers I know in the Pittsburgh area, not the case. I also know that around here, high school students have some manner of say in the courses that they take based upon the goals they have set for themselves. I elected to take extra maths and sciences, as well as more than the minimum requirement for foreign language, to give myself better odds at college acceptances and successes. Other students elected to go to the career and technology school for half a day and learn things like auto mechanics and body work, cosmetology, and electrical so that they could plan for a future after high school where they could get a skilled job.
Prior to high school, perhaps there is time in the curriculum for sex education to the degree you’re talking about, but I don’t believe the standardized testing for a month statement holds true in all areas there either, as my sister is a middle school guidance counselor (and part of her job is coordinating the standardized testing), and she states that the students she has in North Carolina are tested a lot but that it doesn’t take up an entire month of the year.
And I think that there’s not one class I took (which I specifically chose to prepare for college) that I would’ve been willing to miss in order to learn diaper changing and checkbook balancing.
For the first, you’d have to lengthen the school day, and for the latter you’re still taking time away from other courses to go on these monthly field trips.
It’s fine that you think this, but it’s your opinion. It isn’t a fact, and it doesn’t hold true with everyone. Nor is it true that those who don’t hold sex as ‘sacred’ are wrong in their beliefs. Schools should not be in the buisness of teaching moral beliefs about sex as if one is correct, as by definition that makes anyone who believes differently wrong.
Then there are those of us who do not in any way tie sex to love or consider marriage to be a goal to achieve. Do you want schools to teach that this is wrong and that sex without love is bad?
Speaking for myself and from my observations of people in college, a significant portion of people in college NEED instruction in how to balance a checkbook, how to fill out forms, and whatnot. Including sex ed. Just because you’re fortunate enough to have the drive or the parents to teach this sort of thing doesn’t make you representative of the majority, and it seems to me this sort of basic life skills stuff is better off as opt-out than opt-in.
When you think about it, how much did high school math classes REALLY prepare you for college-level ones? (at least at my school, the answer was “not at all”)
The other thing is this–my high school’s more-than-adequate sex/health ed program was 2hrs/week–8th grade was the biology of it, fitness, and anti-drug propoganda, and 10th grade was more question-and-answer and generally elective-based–there were CPR classes and whatnot available. That’s two study periods a week taken away, for two years, one of which is junior high. If you really think that small a time committment would take away from the academic goals of people like yourself, all I can say is I wish I would have gone to your high school–I took every single advanced and elective math and science course on offer and still had study periods open because there just wasn’t that much available during the school day.
Point taken. Fridays, not Thursdays. A school night would be impractical.
Well, it’s not the college-bound who really need these courses.
And I’m not advocating cancelling Ancient History to make room-- I’m talking about adding it to extant courses at an appropriate level. You don’t want to put “Real Life Math” in an advanced calc class, obviously, but it could be part of the teaching of math at lower levels-- say at elementary levels, the kids would be given a fake checkbook and given all of a household’s expenses and learn to balance it. Later, they could learn about compound interest and all that fun junk.
It would be instead of dry math problems to solve from the book. They could make it a game-- if you write too many checks to the kid who represents recreation, the kid who is the electric company would take away a token which represents your electric in your house. The kids with the right tokens at the end would win a prize.
For parenting aspects, I think that the prorgram which gives computerized dolls to kids is an excellent idea. At sixth or seventh grade, every kid in America should be issued one of those things.
It also may be a surprise to some that women with college educations and professional careers often have babies. Learning diaper changing can actually be good to know - even if you plan to go to college.
Hey, whaddaya think illegal immigrants are for?! 
Oh sure…easy for YOU to say, living in Florida… try finding some illegal nannies up here in the frozen north!
They prepared me quite well, since I had taken so much math in high school that I had already met the algebra, trigonometry and differential calculus requirements by the time I got to college and got to start out in integral calculus immediately instead of taking the basics like many of my classmates.
I ended up running out of time and had to choose between advanced physics and advanced biology in my senior year. I wish I’d had time to take both, but ended up with only the advanced physics.
I’d have taken an F before dealing with one of those things. In fact, I did flat out refuse to carry around the ‘sack of flour’ that my school used instead of ‘computerized doll.’
Although, I could see myself figuring out how to hack the computerized doll instead of actually doing the project.
I don’t see how a computerized baby doll being handed to a middle school student is going to do anything constructive, since so many of them are unlikely to do a damn thing with it.
Of course it will do something constructive. It will make them scared of getting pregnant. That’s really the whole point, isn’t it?
As I understand, the doll records how long it cried before it was attended. Students who neglect “the baby” receive a failing grade in the course. You’re right-- some kids may refuse to tend the doll and get a failing grade and not care about it, but students who care about their GPA would comply.
As I see it, a few sleepless nights feeding and changing “the baby” might sway those girls who want to have a baby because they think they’re cute and don’t understand what a hard job caring for an infant can be.
When the only consequence is an F in a middle school class that’s not going to cause them any serious problems because they’ll be promoted to the next grade anyway?
I’m skeptical.
It might, if middle school GPA meant anything.
It does if you had parents like mine who were quite willing to ground me if I recieved a failing grade.
If they were that strict, you probably were pretty scared of getting pregnant to begin with.
Or of getting a girl pregnant. Don’t mean to presume your sex.
Anything that coerces students into learning a highly debatable doctrine using GPA blackmail should be banned.
I attend a rather highly-ranked public high school - as such, the majority of teachers meet basic hiring standards. Some are even competent (zing!). Really, though, the great majority of teachers are quite good - with the conspicuous exception of the health (i.e. sex ed - it doesn’t even pretend to teach anything else) teachers. Any idea that health education actually teaches anything in the current system should be discarded - partially because various political influences prevent most substantive teaching from taking place and partially because, since the education requirements of health teachers are so low, the dross of the dross are teaching them, the class is little more than idle time.
I am not certain whether or not sex education can successfully be taught in schools, but I do know that it is not so now, and any attempt to reform it will have to take into account existing conditions.
By which you mean political conditions?
I would’ve been grounded for getting a failing grade in a subject that mattered, but both of my parents said they fully supported my decision to refuse the ‘bag of flour’ baby in HS.
My entire class ended up not carrying them around, and the teacher feeling that she couldn’t fail us all, gave everybody Cs for the quarter.
I’ve yet to see any conclusive proof that a fake-baby in middle school or high school has any affect at all on the pregnancy rate of teenage girls.