The generation gap is as real and as impassable as it has been for all of mankinds history. Little can change this, but this generation of teens do have one thing they can share with their parents.
The absurdity of 'Just Say No'.
In the eighties is was drugs, for this generation it is all about sex. The trouble then, as now, is it doesn't equip teens with the proper tools to make smart decisions. The basic technique is the try to scare the hell out of the audience with tales of disaster and, most of the time, outright lies.
I hope we can all agree that the war on drugs, and the Just Say No plan, was at best an abject failure. I wonder why any rational person expects this latest scheme will work.
Sex education is a subject that for many has a very high ICK factor. Parents are not comfortable talking about sex with their kids, and most kids would be very happy to never consider the sexual nature of their parents. Too few children get real information from their parents, and the second source for information (the schools) can now sum up the state approved curriculum in the 5 seconds it takes to present.
Don't do it.
Teens make stupid decisions. The majority don't think that they are invincible, they KNOW they are invincible. Only by giving them real information, facts not fear, can we arm them to survive their own mistakes.
When I was young, our church youth got the most effective sex lecture that I have ever heard of. A member of the congregation did this for us. He was an MD and a PHd, teaching classes in the school year, and running a free clinic in a resort area during the summer.
He explained everything. What happened, why birth control works, and why it didn't. We learned about the various STD's, what might help prevent them, and what wouldn't. All of this covered in under 2 hours.
Two things that he said have stayed with me. The first was the only way to be sure that you never had to deal with a crisis pregnancy was to never have sex. There were a number of ways to greatly lower the chances, but for 100% security you had to stop at third base. The second was point was highly pragmatic, every boy and girl should always carry a condom when going out on a date.
This was wisdom he carried from hearing from teens and young adults every day all summer long. They didn't plan of having sex, it just happened, they got carried away, and they were unprepared.
The current direction of our nations sex education favors putting our children in exactly the same position as the kids he saw, uninformed and unprepared. Abstinence needs to be a huge part of the program, but real information needs to come with it, not right wing scare tactics.
and the groups like True Lies, who's speakers appear promote this crap should be closed down.
1 comment:
Yeah, and now teenagers are told that condoms cause cancer and birth control pills are only 20% effective. I don't call that progress.
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