Have you ever been to Wisconsin? I have. I was lucky enough to be there briefly during the summer maybe half a dozen years ago, and I was very impressed. Milwaukee looked to be roughly Cincinnatian in size and in aesthetic qualities, but was mysteriously lacking in a bunch of people being killed all the time. We drove through Madison, with all those pretty lakes, right around sunrise, and that was downright beautiful. There was so much green...it was really the highlight of my trip out west. But today, Wisconsin is disappointing me.
A district attorney in Juneau County has informed high schools within his jurisdiction that teaching students about birth control and sexually transmitted diseases will result in prosecution. How does this work, you ask? Well, according to the DA, teaching sex ed to teenagers amounts to nothing more than contributing to the delinquency of a minor! Really? But wait, this gets even better. These schools are not required to teach sex ed, but those that do are required to teach students about birth control and STDs! That is to say, by teaching students about these things that the DA refers to as "sick and shameful", the schools would be following the explicitly stated law!
I really, sincerely hope that some teacher challenges this and teaches the proper curriculum anyway, in order to challenge the district attorney's decision on this matter. It'll be the Scopes Trial all over again (yes, I know that Scopes was found guilty, but that was teaching evolution in 1920's Tennessee. That wouldn't even go over there today!) I can't imagine that any of this would stand up in a court of law (though I have not the greatest faith in our legal system) as anything resembling contributing to the delinquency of a minor.
On a side note, when are people going to finally give up this notion that teaching sex ed to teenagers is a bad thing? Has it not been shown pretty conclusively that telling kids not to have sex, then sticking your fingers in your ears and screaming until the devil goes away, does not really do anything towards actually stopping kids from having sex? Give up already! They're kids, it's what they do. You need to just accept that and teach them how to do it in a way that won't get anyone pregnant or give anyone the clap. We're a fucking decade into the twenty-first century here people, isn't it time we stopped acting like it's the goddamn 1950s?
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I'd want teachers to teach sex ed to my daughter. It's better to keep them informed than then finding out the hard way.
ReplyDeleteFrom my understanding, people have been having sex since the beginning of time. Leave it to a supposedly more modern and advanced society to put laws in place on what two consenting people can do with their bodies, what we can be taught, and what is not for us to know. Guess what, everyone who's been in high school, which in this country is roughly everyone, found out what sex is, probably before high school. That's my biggest beef. Who decides what we can and cannot learn in school. You're going to tell me that a kid is more likely to use long division or have sex in the next year. Might as well teach him something he can use.
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