Virginity Pledges. Well so much for that idea!

[Anne_Neville]

@DSYoungEsq

There are still oodles of opportunities at most high schools and middle schools for devoting what is now an elective class to a mandatory Life Experiences class.

Just make sure we don’t just make the… how shall I put this… not-so-academically-advanced kids take the class. My high school, and from what I’ve heard some other high schools, offered a class called “Consumer Math”. But what it was was a third year of math for kids not smart enough to take Algebra II (when I was in high school, when dinosaurs roamed the Earth, most kids didn’t take Algebra I until ninth grade). The smart kids need this class, too. There are too many cases of smart people going off to college and managing to get into crippling debt to say that any kid smart enough to understand exponentials is automatically going to understand compound interest and how it applies to credit cards. For that matter, the mathematical details aren’t as important as saying “if you carry a balance on your credit card, you will end up paying a lot of money (interest) and getting nothing in return.” Yes, some smart kids could have figured this out for themselves, but too many of them don’t figure it out until they’ve already made some bad choices and experienced the consequences.

You could say “Well, the parents should teach them this stuff.” One problem with that is the taboo on financial discussions in our society, that makes some parents uncomfortable discussing finances with their kids. When I was in high school, I didn’t know how much money my father made, or how much money my parents spent every month or what they spent it on. Yes, parents should teach their kids about finances, but, in the real world, at least some of them won’t. We have sex education in schools for similar reasons.

I doubt we’ll get something like this, though. There are too many entrenched interests (credit card companies and the like) with too much lobbying money that like having a financially ignorant population…

[MandaJo]

@Jayn_Newell

Or in the case of my high school, take a useless mandatory class and turn it into something like this. We had a pair of classes called Physically Active Lifestyles (Gym Lite) and Career and Life Management (I still don’t know what this was supposed to be) that had to be taken to graduate. Pretty useless classes, really.

I promise you that Career and Life Management was designed to be exactly this, but degenerated. Probably because very few people want to grow up to be Career and Life Management teachers, and so the people that end up teaching it are the ones that have no particular vocation to teach anything, when in fact it’s the sort of thing that really demands a passionate, creative, dedicated teacher. Furthermore, it’s hard to devise a curriculum that everyone agrees on–people have wildly different views on money and because they are so very private about it, you can’t talk in concrete terms about anything. I mean, is it wrong to walk away from medical debt? How about borrowing money for a wedding? A car? How should married people set up their bank accounts?

Sex and relationships are even worse than money: pre-marital sex is terribly complicated once you get past the basics of protection: is premarital sex ok if you are really in love? What if you love them but aren’t in love with them? What if you don’t love them but like them a lot? What if you don’t like them much but it feels really good? What if it means you get a free dinner and you don’t really mind? Is oral sex an expression of affection and mutually enjoyable, or is it degrading? What about anal? Is marriage a worthwhile institution? How do you know if you should marry a person? When is divorce ok? Is homosexuality ok? Who should pay for dinner? These are important, important things, but they are really, really hard to talk about in a classroom–you can just have discussions, but kids just talking among themselves tend to come to odd conclusions–few have enough experience to add real insight, and those insights are often lost in the noise of what sounds good in the abstract. The more a teacher facilitates those discussions the more you start having official answers to those questions, and the closer you get to government sanctioned answers to things that are really none of the government’s business.

Kids need to talk about all these things with people that have experience and knowledge. They desperately need guidance. But public education is ill suited to go much beyond the very superficial. I don’t disagree that home and consumer economics classes need to be beefed up and made more applicable–there is always room for improvement. But I also think that if a kid wants to take a course load that is heavy on the arts and academics and get this sort of thing at home, they also ought to have that option.

[Finally]

Or wait. Maybe, as parents, we should teach these kinds of things to our kids. You know, sex ed, budgeting, etc. Maybe teach by example?

My 13 year old son knows his single mom can’t afford to pay for college and to make it happen the responsiblilty is his. He takes that responsibility very seriously and works hard at football, wrestling, guitar and his studies.

[RTFirefly]

@Finally

Or wait. Maybe, as parents, we should teach these kinds of things to our kids. You know, sex ed, budgeting, etc. Maybe teach by example?

The problem is, there are a lot of kids in this country being raised by parents who don’t know the slightest thing about handling money, or are too embarrassed to give their kids more than a minimal 10-minute talk about How Babies Are Made, or whatever.

ISTM we’d be better off as a society if everyone got some basic sex ed, money management ed, etc. - that this would be a public good, not just a private one. So we shouldn’t rely on private actors to make it happen.

[Nom_de_Plume]

@Liberal

I wish it weren’t just all about sex on either side. I’d like to see teens educated about relationships, commitment, household budgets, living within means, setting longterm goals, saving for and buying homes, responsible use of credit, and all that sort of thing. It concerns me that we make it all about who sticks what where, while ignoring the larger consequences of interpersonal partnerships.

Well, isn’t that the job of parents?

[Marley23]

Some potential issues with this class, even though it sounds like a fair idea:

You’d need to certify a teacher in it somehow
Some parents would probably object
Since it’s not going to be a class that gets college credit, it might not be a high priority for the students
It might take away time from all the things schools are mandated to do, since there won’t be a standardized test on it

The class is a pretty good idea, even if it’d never be that good in the execution. But if you’re wondering why not everybody has a class with these kinds of life skills, those are some potential answers.

Back to the OP:
Teenagers are lying about sex! Alert the medi- oh, I guess someone already did. Anybody who thinks abstinence-only education is a good idea is never going to be persuaded by the facts, which is unfortunate.

[Anne_Neville]

@Finally

Or wait. Maybe, as parents, we should teach these kinds of things to our kids. You know, sex ed, budgeting, etc. Maybe teach by example?

If you’re a parent, it’s clear that you at least figured out the mechanics of sex. But being a parent is no guarantee that you understand budgeting, how much of your income you should spend on housing, what happens if you don’t pay off your credit card balance every month, or any of that. My cite is that lots of families with kids are losing their homes in this current crisis. And, while you should be commended for telling your 13-year-old about your financial situation, not all parents are going to do that. My parents had a pretty good handle on their finances (at least as far as I know), but they never talked about them with me or my sister.

Another problem is that parents’ financial situations now might not be representative of what a kid just out of high school or college is going to be facing. If you’ve worked hard and saved, you might very well be better off by the time your kid gets to middle or high school than you were right out of college. You will be able to afford luxuries that a kid just out of high school or college can’t. They will see you buying those things, learn from your example that that’s how grown-ups live, and try to emulate that lifestyle on a lower salary. Oops…

Also, the financial world changes. Dickens’ advice to not spend more than you earn might still be worth following now, but a lot has changed since my parents graduated from college and bought their first house. Back then, a 30-year fixed rate mortgage was the only game in town. How would they know to tell their kids to beware of adjustable-rate or interest-only mortgages, if they have no experience with those?

[Lobohan]

@Nom_de_Plume

Well, isn’t that the job of parents?

Isn’t it obvious that parents as a class aren’t doing it?

Our society has much more access to ready credit than it did 25 years ago. And as a result people are more massively in debt. Why is it a bad idea to mandate training that illustrates how much a person will pay in the long run if they max out credit cards?

Half of all parents are average or below in intelligence. Poor parents tend to be uneducated. What kind of a sadist would want those people’s children to suffer because their parents aren’t savvy enough to spend wisely?

[Jayn_Newell]

@MandaJo

I promise you that Career and Life Management was designed to be exactly this, but degenerated. Probably because very few people want to grow up to be Career and Life Management teachers, and so the people that end up teaching it are the ones that have no particular vocation to teach anything, when in fact it’s the sort of thing that really demands a passionate, creative, dedicated teacher. Furthermore, it’s hard to devise a curriculum that everyone agrees on–people have wildly different views on money and because they are so very private about it, you can’t talk in concrete terms about anything. I mean, is it wrong to walk away from medical debt? How about borrowing money for a wedding? A car? How should married people set up their bank accounts?

Well, to say that the teacher I had for it wasn’t well-suited to it would be a ‘duh’ statement (she really wasn’t suited to high-schoolers at all) and it did not help that I had to take it in French. But even some basic information on how finances work, a general overview, would be an improvement. I really only have the vaguest idea on how the financial system operates, and knowing that would help people decide how to manage their own finances.

As far as relationships and marriage go, I kind of like how the Catholic Church deals with it–couples have to take counselling before they can be married in the church. It is a very personal process, so not well suited to high school, but it also keeps couples from going into a marriage without talking about the important issues that they will have to deal with in the future. The weekend retreat was a bit superfluous for us, but I’d like to see that sort of thing become more widespread as a mechanism for people to prepare for everything that a marriage entails in our society.

[Anne_Neville]

@Marley23

Since it’s not going to be a class that gets college credit, it might not be a high priority for the students

This is one reason why I think middle school/junior high might be better than high school for this. Middle school students aren’t as focused as high school students are on what gets college credit.

[DigitalC]

People who want abtinence only, and virginity pledges aren’t trying to stop teen pregnancys or STDs. They are trying to stop teenage sex, period. Actually they are trying to stop teenage girls from having sex, boys will be boys after all (as long as they are not being boys with other boys). The fact that the girls who fail to keep their pledges get pregnant or get STDs only serves to cement their belief that the little whores should have kept their damn legs closed and does absolutely nothing to change their minds with regards to their puritan beliefs.

[Algher]

Hmm - Life Skills 101. You mean skills that cover areas like:
Personal Management (managing your money), http://www.scouting.org/boyscouts/advancementandawards/meritbadges/mb-PERM.aspx
Family Life (doing your share in a family), http://www.scouting.org/boyscouts/advancementandawards/meritbadges/mb-FAML.aspx
Personal Fitness (building a program to keep fit, because weight issues in High School are highly correlated with weight issues in adulthood), http://www.scouting.org/boyscouts/advancementandawards/meritbadges/mb-PERF.aspx
Duties of a Citizen (How does the government of your community, nation and world impact you - and how can you be a part of it)
http://www.scouting.org/boyscouts/advancementandawards/meritbadges/mb-CITC.aspx
http://www.scouting.org/boyscouts/advancementandawards/meritbadges/mb-CITN.aspx

If you have sons - get them into Boy Scouts. The required badges for Eagle cover these issues. If you don’t like the Boy Scouts (and I have issues with some of their rules - another thread PLEASE), you will find that the merit badge books for those badges are good little primers for kids 11-17 years old.

[dropzone]

@MandaJo

I promise you that Career and Life Management was designed to be exactly this, but degenerated. Probably because very few people want to grow up to be Career and Life Management teachers, and so the people that end up teaching it are the ones that have no particular vocation to teach anything, when in fact it’s the sort of thing that really demands a passionate, creative, dedicated teacher.

Hmmm, this sounds right up the alley of people from other professions who are transitioning into teaching. God knows there’s little people my age like better than to tell teens how they should live their lives!

[catsix]

Liberal said:
I wish it weren’t just all about sex on either side. I’d like to see teens educated about relationships, commitment, household budgets, living within means, setting longterm goals, saving for and buying homes, responsible use of credit, and all that sort of thing. It concerns me that we make it all about who sticks what where, while ignoring the larger consequences of interpersonal partnerships.

I think those are different classes. Fiscal responsibility is not just for married couples, after all. It’s the responsibility of each individual to live within his or her own financial means.

What you’re talking about teaching them has little, if anything, to do with being in a relationship and everything to do with being an adult member of society who contributes positively to it.

Also, sex does not necessarily entail a relationship. You may disagree with that, and may find it doesn’t work for you, but there’s no reason to teach kids that if you have sex outside a relationship that you must, necessarily, be harmed by this. What they need to know is how to prevent disease and pregnancy, not how to feel bad about sleeping with someone who didn’t love them.

wonder9

said:
As a former public school teacher, the “why don’t we teach them this in school” argument really bugs me. Exactly WHEN during the school day, or school year, or which year, or in place of which OTHER mandatory education do you propose this occur?
[/quote]

In the US, most kids have a health class that begins in elementary school and continues through eighth grade. Typically there is also at least one semester of health class in high school, somewhere around ninth or tenth grade. Since sexual health is part of health, and kids get sexually interested (and some of them get active) between ages 13 and 15, teach it to them then. Instead of endlessly repeating the parts of the insides of the teeth, for fuck’s sake teach them something they can use.

Fiscal responsibility should be taught in their civics and home economics classes. Instead of all this bullshit about making microwave mac and cheese, teach them about budgets, electric bills, and what it really costs to go to a grocery store. Silly me, but I tend to think that the economics half of home economics should not be forgotten! Again, this is a class that most middle schoolers have, as well as generally being required at some point during high school.

We get your kids for 6 and a half to 7 hours a day. One hour of that is lost to lunch, recess or other transition time.

I dunno where you teach, but after fifth grade, I never saw ‘recess’ again.

Anne Neville said:
This is one reason why I think middle school/junior high might be better than high school for this. Middle school students aren’t as focused as high school students are on what gets college credit.

That and for some of them, by the time they turn 14 it’s too late.

[DSeid]

@Bricker

I don’t see any such solid evidence in your quote.

It’s true that, if this study is believed, there’s a correlation between more risky behaviors and abstinence-only education.

But where is the causation proof?

Two groups, well matched in baseline beliefs, values, family beliefs and values, perceptions of friends beliefs and values, etc. Only variable is virginity pledge vs no virginity pledge. Followed prospectively for 5 years. Short of a double blinded control randomized prospective study (good luck with that) this is the most solid evidence imaginable.

The whole article if you want to critically review it.

The hypothesis that virginity pledges reduce risky behaviors is solidly falsified. The hypothesis that virginity pledges increase risky behaviors is supported strongly.

[MandaJo]

@dropzone

Hmmm, this sounds right up the alley of people from other professions who are transitioning into teaching. God knows there’s little people my age like better than to tell teens how they should live their lives!

The problem with this is that it’s a vicious circle: programs like this sound like a good idea and a few dedicated people manage to make them very successful. They are then expanded to a wider area, usually as an unfunded mandate. Schools always have one or two (or five or ten) totally useless teachers that can’t be removed: either they know where the bodies are buried, or they have some task they do well that no one else knows how to do, or they have simply been around forever (and this isn’t just a teaching problem–most organizations have people like this). You don’t want them teaching classes in subjects where kids get tested by the state–since the school lives or dies by those results–so you put them in places where they can’t hurt anything–like in school suspension, or health, or economics, or “life skills”–you don’t go out and recruit someone new and eager. So then the program becomes a joke, a blow-off class, a subject of scorn. Academically ambitious kids avoid it, academically unambitious kids flock to it. The quality continues to degrade. Then, when people see kids aren’t getting the skills they need, they start all over with another pilot program and another acronym and the whole thing repeats itself until you can honestly have 2 or 3 vestigial programs in the same school, all taught by people that don’t believe their own subject is worth teaching.

[Critical1]

you could start by killing the Xian naming of the program. telling people not to do something is not education, it is not only not education its the polar opposite of education. saying “dont do it” is the kind of thing you tell 5 year olds reaching for a hot pan on the stove, not a 15 year old horny teen whos currently getting their ass kicked by hormones telling them to get a piece of ass any way they can.

it should be called Abstinence, we really hope you dont have premarital sex even though us your parents did, and your granparents…and their grandparents.

funding ignorance with public dollars is republicans feeding the Xian right their pay off for being good little voters.

[Anne_Neville]

@catsix

I think those are different classes. Fiscal responsibility is not just for married couples, after all. It’s the responsibility of each individual to live within his or her own financial means.

Absolutely. If they’re average, the boys are going to be unmarried for 9 or 10 years after they graduate from high school, the girls for 7 or 8. A lot of them will need to deal with finances and budgets during that time.

I’d like to see “how to recognize abuse/abusers” much earlier than comprehensive sex education. A 6-year-old doesn’t need to know about contraception yet, but does need to know how to recognize physical or sexual abuse and tell somebody who can help. Recognizing abuse (and what to do about it) in romantic/sexual relationships could come later, but should be fairly early, definitely before high school.

[MandaJo]

I am just rambling at this point, but it seems to me, after years of teaching High School, that what we really need, for both sex and money, are programs --for both sex and money–that are designed to deal with the fact that teenagers don’t just lack knowledge, they think differently than adults. I know that there is research out there about how the decision making part of the brain is the latest to develop, and I’ve seen it myself countless times: many teenagers cannot process probabilities and risk/reward accurately, even when they have all the information–they may know everything there is to know about sex and disease and pregnancy (or spending or saving or debt, or drinking and drugs and driving), but they figure if there’s a 50% chance it will be all right, then they figure they will get lucky every single time. It’s why you have to be consistent with kids–if an exception has ever been made, they assume it will be made again the next time, no matter how often that has failed to happen.

None of the programs I’ve ever seen really deal with this. They all work from the idea that teenagers are basically rational and will make rational choices if given information. And many of them are. But many of them simply are not, and if somebody really wanted to make the world a better place, they’d come up with a way to overcome this.

[Paul_in_Qatar]

Why aren’t boys asked to take the tee-total pledge?