Right, they aren't groomers!

[firstfloor]

Unborn children are also pre-adults. But it doesn't seem to bother you to allow abortion. You can't have pre-adults learning about inappropriate sexual behaviour, which in your mind is fine and dandy and murder them before they're born, too.

Can you not just let me win one argument at a time, please?

[rogue06]

We used the water and flour stuff to make paper Mache stuff - dinosaurs and such.

Piñatas. Water and flour glue on strips of newspapers over a large blown up balloon. Let dry and carve a small hole in side (which pops the balloon). Fill with treats. Place cut out section back and add more paste and newspaper. Let dry again.


I think that might have been the year before we made tie-dyed T-shirts

[mossrose]

Can you not just let me win one argument at a time, please?

What makes you think you're winning anything.

[Diogenes]

Of course not. Why would you suggest such an irresponsible thing?
Conservatives, typically it seems, don’t know where the line is between sound and age appropriate education in a safe environment, and downright recklessness.

Yes, best time to teach the facts of life when they are under the legal age young adults, or pre-adults, if you prefer.

How would that not be teaching the facts of life? In enlightened Europe, they aren't so prudish and have a lower age of consent as I'm sure our resident European would attest. If a field trip is reckless, what about just a practical demonstration? What if they brought in a prostitute on career day?

I find it hilarious you think education regarding sex toys is somehow "age appropriate". Obviously I would be against a field trip as I am against the education of sex toys.

[Starlight]

Watch the video - at about 2 minutes he says the kids were 14-18.

Okay thanks. But unless I'm mistaken 14 is still secondary school age.

[Cow Poke]

Okay thanks. But unless I'm mistaken 14 is still secondary school age.

Actually, according to the Department of Education, "secondary" school is considered High school. 14 would still be either junior high or middle school, or high school, depending on the student's date of birth.
(it varies from state to state and district to district)

Structure of U.S. Education

Education in the United States follows a pattern similar to that in many systems. Early childhood education is followed by primary school (called elementary school in the United States), middle school, secondary school (called high school in the United States), and then postsecondary (tertiary) education. Postsecondary education includes non-degree programs that lead to certificates and diplomas plus six degree levels: associate, bachelor, first professional, master, advanced intermediate, and research doctorate. The U.S. system does not offer a second or higher doctorate, but does offer postdoctorate research programs. Adult and continuing education, plus special education, cut across all educational levels.

The following links direct you to information on different aspects of the structure of education in the United States. You may open these documents and link directly to the information sources, or you may save or print the pages and use them later.

[Cow Poke]

Why are you suggesting homosexual sex ed is taught before secondary school? The school in the OP includes the secondary school age range. I haven't seen any evidence shown to suggest the school was teaching sex ed to kids who were younger than the age of consent.

Back to this, though, "the age of consent" is never 14 or 15 in the US. In some states (34 of them), it's 16 - in the remaining states it's 17 or 18.

[Gondwanaland]

Okay thanks. But unless I'm mistaken 14 is still secondary school age.

Depends on the time of year they were born. Some would qualify for 9th grade (start of secondary school). Others would be in 8th Grade (middle school/junior high/ K-8 primary depending on the school/area)

[Cow Poke]

Why are you suggesting homosexual sex ed is taught before secondary school? The school in the OP includes the secondary school age range. I haven't seen any evidence shown to suggest the school was teaching sex ed to kids who were younger than the age of consent.

Age of consent in Illinois is 17. The 14-16 year old kids would all be under that, obviously.

[Starlight]

Back to this, though, "the age of consent" is never 14 or 15 in the US. In some states (34 of them), it's 16 - in the remaining states it's 17 or 18.

Thinking about it a bit more, I realize that most schools do teach sex ed before the age of consent, for the obvious reason that some kids aren't going to follow the law and wait until they're legally allowed to have sex, and you obviously want kids that do this to know about contraception and not get pregnant.

Thinking about my own schooling, we did a few hours of sex-ed at age 12-13 which mainly focused on bodily changes in teenage years, and a tiny bit on contraception and STDs. At my high school it was rumored that there would be two sets of sex-ed classes at age 14 and age 17, rumored to involve learning how to put a condom on a banana, but I never personally had either of those classes (perhaps I was away those days, perhaps the school just had poor curriculum planning and my class got missed out). The age of consent here is 16.

A Christian friend (who I assumed was reasonably conservative) I caught up with a few years back said she was part of an organization that went into schools to teach sex ed classes. She lamented to me that the kids were a lot more sexually experienced than the curriculum tended to assume, and that though she was there to teach the basic ideas of the act to supposed virgins, the kids would be asking questions of her about why they weren't lasting remotely as long during their sex as the actors in the porn they watched. She commented to me hearing that porn actors might take drugs to delay the finale, or that the porn video might be shot over multiple days and then edited to look like one long event, was quite a relief to these kids as they realized that they were comparing themselves to unrealistic expectations.

That talk with her about her work made me realize a lot of adults are a bit willfully ignorant about what the kids are up to. And that adult thoughts about 'appropriate' sex education are often judged according to the lack of sex that adults would prefer to be occurring in the kids lives, and not realistically based on reality or on what would actually help the kids to navigate their current situations.

I did hear a talk from a politician here who said she was raised in a very conservative family and her (foreign) school hadn't covered any sex ed. She said the sex ed she and her siblings received from their mother was a very stern finger waggling "you know the thing? Don't do the thing!" She didn't actually know what thing her mother was talking about. When she got pregnant as a teenager she later learned what her mother had been talking about. As a result that politician was quite strongly in favor of schools providing decent sex education because she knew from her experience that parents don't always provide it successfully. (I've also heard a different story from another source of some immigrant Christian kids getting pregnant due to not knowing that sex leads to pregnancy)

As a result of these experiences I'm always skeptical of conservatives who are against compulsory sex-ed in schools: If you want more teenage pregnancies, that's how to achieve them.

[Cow Poke]

Thinking about it a bit more, I realize that most schools do teach sex ed before the age of consent, for the obvious reason that some kids aren't going to follow the law and wait until they're legally allowed to have sex, and you obviously want kids that do this to know about contraception and not get pregnant.

Thinking about my own schooling, we did a few hours of sex-ed at age 12-13 which mainly focused on bodily changes in teenage years, and a tiny bit on contraception and STDs. At my high school it was rumored that there would be two sets of sex-ed classes at age 14 and age 17, rumored to involve learning how to put a condom on a banana, but I never personally had either of those classes (perhaps I was away those days, perhaps the school just had poor curriculum planning and my class got missed out). The age of consent here is 16.

A Christian friend (who I assumed was reasonably conservative) I caught up with a few years back said she was part of an organization that went into schools to teach sex ed classes. She lamented to me that the kids were a lot more sexually experienced than the curriculum tended to assume, and that though she was there to teach the basic ideas of the act to supposed virgins, the kids would be asking questions of her about why they weren't lasting remotely as long during their sex as the actors in the porn they watched. She commented to me hearing that porn actors might take drugs to delay the finale, or that the porn video might be shot over multiple days and then edited to look like one long event, was quite a relief to these kids as they realized that they were comparing themselves to unrealistic expectations.

That talk with her about her work made me realize a lot of adults are a bit willfully ignorant about what the kids are up to. And that adult thoughts about 'appropriate' sex education are often judged according to the lack of sex that adults would prefer to be occurring in the kids lives, and not realistically based on reality or on what would actually help the kids to navigate their current situations.

I did hear a talk from a politician here who said she was raised in a very conservative family and her (foreign) school hadn't covered any sex ed. She said the sex ed she and her siblings received from their mother was a very stern finger waggling "you know the thing? Don't do the thing!" She didn't actually know what thing her mother was talking about. When she got pregnant as a teenager she later learned what her mother had been talking about. As a result that politician was quite strongly in favor of schools providing decent sex education because she knew from her experience that parents don't always provide it successfully. (I've also heard a different story from another source of some immigrant Christian kids getting pregnant due to not knowing that sex leads to pregnancy)

As a result of these experiences I'm always skeptical of conservatives who are against sex-ed: If you want more teenage pregnancies, that's how to achieve them.

But laughing about butt plugs and dildos, I would hope, would be over the top, no?

[Starlight]

But laughing about butt plugs and dildos, I would hope, would be over the top, no?

Well it's not like those are LGBT specific things, so there's a bit of a weird implication in the thread that this has any necessary connection to sex educators acknowledging during sex education classes that some people have gay sex rather than straight sex.

Generally I tend to feel that more knowledge is better than less knowledge and that educators are there to educate, not there to be censors that hide information. So I'm not generally sympathetic to arguments of the form "you taught them too much".

I feel I am too old and out of touch with what teenagers are up to these days to have any idea of what percentage of teenagers would have come across sex toys / be using them already regardless of what the school covered. As per my above post about my Christian friend, I do think it's important that sex educators in schools actually deal with the situation the students are actually in with regard to sex, and not the situation that conservative adults would prefer they were in.

A brief google on the subject doesn't seem to give much actual data on the rates of use of sex toys among teenagers, but women's health sites come up that recommend them for teenage girls for a variety of reasons including dealing with menstrual pain. Basically my view is that if the school has any reason to believe their students are already using sex toys, then how to use them safely should indeed be in the curriculum, and if they have no reason to believe their students are using sex toys then perhaps it shouldn't be in the curriculum because it's not relevant (though its presence hurts nobody). And it seems to me to not have anything to do with LGBT issues. One article that came up when I did the google was that 50% of Britons reported owning sex toys when surveyed... presumably nobody is arguing that 50% of British people are LGBT.

[Diogenes]

Well it's not like those are LGBT specific things, so there's a bit of a weird implication in the thread that this has any necessary connection to sex educators acknowledging during sex education classes that some people have gay sex rather than straight sex.

The sex toys were specifically distributed by an LGTBQ group. It's not straight people handing out sex toys in schools as props, it's part of queer pedagogy.

Generally I tend to feel that more knowledge is better than less knowledge and that educators are there to educate, not there to be censors that hide information. So I'm not generally sympathetic to arguments of the form "you taught them too much".

So is having people act out sex not teaching too much?

I feel I am too old and out of touch with what teenagers are up to these days to have any idea of what percentage of teenagers would have come across sex toys / be using them already regardless of what the school covered. As per my above post about my Christian friend, I do think it's important that sex educators in schools actually deal with the situation the students are actually in with regard to sex, and not the situation that conservative adults would prefer they were in.

It has nothing to do with sex education.

A brief google on the subject doesn't seem to give much actual data on the rates of use of sex toys among teenagers, but women's health sites come up that recommend them for teenage girls for a variety of reasons including dealing with menstrual pain. Basically my view is that if the school has any reason to believe their students are already using sex toys, then how to use them safely should indeed be in the curriculum, and if they have no reason to believe their students are using sex toys then perhaps it shouldn't be in the curriculum because it's not relevant (though its presence hurts nobody). And it seems to me to not have anything to do with LGBT issues.

The students, per the videos, had no idea what the objects were. They were not already using sex toys. They were introduced to sex toys by the school. If a student is already using sex toys, they would already know how to use them. It's not about "LGBT issues", it's about queer pedagogy.

[Starlight]

The sex toys were specifically distributed by an LGTBQ group.

I'm aware that's the specific details of this story, but sex toys are not an LGBTQ specific thing.

it's part of queer pedagogy.

You keep using that phrase. I'm not familiar with it. Did you just make it up to try and fit your Greek philosopher poster name? The Greeks, arguably the founders of western civilization, were certainly into 'queer pedagogy' as you might put it.

So is having people act out sex not teaching too much?

Sure. Monty Python has a satirical skit on that.

The students, per the videos, had no idea what the objects were.

Do the videos actually say that?

It's not about "LGBT issues", it's about queer pedagogy.

That sentence makes no sense to me which makes me think I might be guessing wrong about what you are meaning by your terminology.

[Diogenes]

I'm aware that's the specific details of this story, but sex toys are not an LGBTQ specific thing.

No one denied that. It was specifically a LGBTQ group that was involved.

You keep using that phrase. I'm not familiar with it. Did you just make it up to try and fit your Greek philosopher poster name? The Greeks, arguably the founders of western civilization, were certainly into 'queer pedagogy' as you might put it.

No, this is Queer pedagogy. In their words.

Do the videos actually say that?

You claimed familiarity. Per the video:

“The kids are just playing with ‘em, looking at ‘em [butt-plugs and dildos] … They're like, ‘How does this butt-plug work? How do we do – like, how does this work?’ That's a really cool part of my job,” he said.

That sentence makes no sense to me which makes me think I might be guessing wrong about what you are meaning by your terminology.

I have provided links.