Essay on sex ed

Discussion in 'Ethics, Morality, & Justice' started by scott3x, Jul 1, 2010.

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  1. scott3x Banned Banned

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    Did an essay, actually a short presentation at my college, concerning sex ed and an even more controversial subject that I believe is related to it. As is clear to anyone who's in the same province, I live in Ontario, Canada. Thought I'd share it here...

    **************
    On April 21st this year, I read that our premier Dalton Mcguinty had decided that Sex ed should become more detailed [24 hour newspaper]. I read that his plan was that in Grade 3, students would learn things such as gender identity and sexual orientation. One person who was particulary upset about this was Dr. Charles McVety, president of Canada Christian College [parentcentral.ca]. He stated:
    “Now, most adults do not question their gender identity. But we’re now going to teach little Johnny to say, ‘Well, I’m male on the outside but maybe I’m a girl on the inside’. This is unconscionable to confuse an eight year old’s mind with this type of indoctrination of a special-interest agenda”.

    McVety doesn’t object to sex education as a whole. Rather, he favours the declining abstinence only education method.

    I also learned that his new sex ed program would also give teachers the freedom to talk about things such as same sex parents and masturbation in Grade 6 [Metro News]. Again, however, some conservative groups, self describing themselves as “family focused”, were not impressed. They accused the government of “corrupting young minds with sexually explicit material”. McGuinty’s counter was that kids would learn about such topics anyway and that it would be better for them to learn these things in school rather than from questionable sources. The conservative groups were undeterred. The material was “bordering on the criminal”, they stated.

    I’m curious to know what people such as McVety would think of a report I read on the internet recently [Humanism by Joe]. It talks of a specific group of christians, the Catholic Church. Specifically, it addresses the issue of priests sexually molesting children. He points out that the Church has acknowledged that 13,000 credible accusations of sexual abuse have been made against Catholic clerics since 1950. He then goes into why this might be. The author explains that there is strong evidence that this widespread problem is caused, at least in part, by the Catholic Church's clerical celibacy requirement and its other sexually repressive doctrines. In fact, statements by Dr. Jay Feierman support a link between sexual repression and pedophilia. As a psychiatrist who has met with hundreds of pedophilic priests at a Catholic treatment center in New Mexico, and who edited the book “Pedophilia: Biosocial Dimensions”, Feierman is in a position to recognize this connection.

    The author of the article further states that people who are concerned about the problem should therefore urge Catholic leaders to reexamine and modify their teachings about sex. Personally, I don’t think we should limit ourselves to catholics; after all, they’re certainly not the only christian group to be sexual repressive, nor is sexual repression something that is exclusive to Christianity. Given this fact, I think that McGuinty is on the right track.

    I think that McGuinty realized that his drive to change things was done too soon. A few days after his announcement that the sex ed curriculum would be changed, the liberals decided to go back to the drawing board concerning the revision of the sex ed curriculum [Charles McVety’s religious right wins victory in Ontario]. I’m fine with that. I just hope that the issue isn’t left on the back burner, because of the enormity of what’s at stake by keeping young people in the dark concerning sexual education.
    **************
     
    Last edited: Jul 1, 2010
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  3. visceral_instinct Monkey see, monkey denigrate Valued Senior Member

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    I agree with teaching kids about those things. Those issues are real, and it is far better for kids to learn about them properly from adults they can trust rather than hearsay and urban myths from other kids.
     
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  5. scott3x Banned Banned

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    Well I'm glad we agree on this

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  7. James R Just this guy, you know? Staff Member

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    Haven't seen you here for a while, scott3x. I actually thought you'd been banned for discussing pedophilia once too often, but maybe that was somebody else.
     
  8. Doreen Valued Senior Member

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    I tend to agree and I dislike the conservative objections, for the most part. I do have a couple of objections however to sex ed. They taught me so much crap in school - take the version of US history for example - that I shudder a little at the thought of even more delving into things like sex by teachers. Second, there is no neutral stance - on anything - on sex. So whatever they teach will be politicized, given the

    I have information that should be in your head and later I will test to see if it is there

    pedagogy that is still the rule out there.

    Just as I shudder at the idea of my children being taught the versions of US history I was taught, I would shudder at my old gym teachers - who were the health ed teachers - taking on sex. Amazingly, they were much better at sex ed than gym. From my perspective that is. They went from drill seargents to politically correct teachers - albeit still with goonlike pedagogy - while walking down the hall from the gym to the classrooms.

    I think, in the US, there is a deep tension between parental rights and school rights and (very few seriously consider) children's rights.

    The false dilemma is that we need to allow these people or only those people to stuff ideas into children's heads

    instead of taking a more PBL - problem based learning approach - approach, not that this would be simple.
    this made me laugh. I mean, it's quite inappropriate if he is not the guy. In fact it is a classic way to zap someone, at a party say.

    [Dan is talking to 3 women when Steve walks up]
    [the 3 women never quite look at Dan the same way after, though nod when he denies the story]
     
  9. scott3x Banned Banned

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    Yeah, haven't found much to interest me here for a while.

    Yes, that was someone else.
     
  10. scott3x Banned Banned

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    Just because they can teach things badly doesn't mean they should give up on trying to teach things right

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    .

    Sexuality is indeed quite controversial, but I don't think that the solution is shying away from the subject. Society will never come to an agreement on the subject if it refuses to try to come to an agreement on it.

    You may take some comfort in the knowledge that sex ed has been getting better, atleast in some places. As to where this may not be the case, I think it's safe to say that we should aim for better sex ed, not its elimination.

    Yeah. Fortunately, I think this is changing. Again, I think we could come up with far better solutions if we could simply talk more about these subjects.

    I've never been one to advocate that only one group, whether it be teachers, parents, or children's peers or internet sites, be allowed to talk on the subject. I do believe, however, that there are good ways, and bad ways, on teaching sex ed. I'm not in favour of the abstinence only model, and I think it's safe to say that that form of sex ed is on the wane in the U.S.; recently, they seemed to be trying to take it out of Ontario's catholic schools, but people such as McVety managed to stave this off for now.

    What do you mean by a "problem based learning approach"? Could you give an example?

    It's an old time blow. I'm known for stirring things up here, and not only on this subject; my views regarding certain events in history (Pearl Harbor, JFK, 9/11) don't exactly match with the official story either, and this has certainly caused friction here in the past. I found other forums to talk on such things, which is part of the reason I haven't been here in so long. But after having presented the OP in college as a presentation, I figured it might just pass as a 'not too controversial' piece of writing here.
     
  11. James R Just this guy, you know? Staff Member

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    Ah.. was it? Apologies. My mistake. Carry on.
     
  12. scott3x Banned Banned

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    No problem. You had a debate on the subject of pedophilia with the person who was banned:
    Debate

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    edophilia is Pseudoscience
     
  13. Bells Staff Member

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    That's one way to put it I guess. I believe at the time something that you found appealing is what angered a lot of people.

    Anywho, lets leave it behind shall we?.. Please.. I beg of you all..
     
  14. scott3x Banned Banned

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    I must admit I'm curious to know what you're referring to. You can PM me with it if you don't want to say it publicly.

    Leave what behind Bells? Again, feel free to PM me if you don't want to say what it is publicly.
     
  15. Stryder Keeper of "good" ideas. Valued Senior Member

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    What?!? you need it written in plain English. Okay lets call it what it is, You commented back then about how you thought children should be able to have sex with adults, we called you a borderline paedophile, which you embelished us with all your supporting evidence of why it should be accepted.

    I'm not going to beat around the bush with this Scott3x, pull this path again and it will be a permaban. We aren't a forum for this sort of rhetoric anymore, you might of had your fun last time, but no more of it.

    Move on to other topics (other than 9/11 conspiracies :wallbang

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    and give this paedophile stuff a wide berth.
     
  16. Bells Staff Member

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    *Sigh*


    No Scott, no offense, but I really have no desire to PM you. I don't want to go back to what was back then. It was nauseating then and a repeat or revisit will be nauseating again. I would rather not, if you don't mind.

    How about we do not speak of any of it again?

    All of us..

    Lets discuss the topic as stated in the OP and let sleeping dogs die in their sleep.
     
  17. Doreen Valued Senior Member

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    I'm not saying they should give up, but at the same time I am expressing my reservations about how most schooling goes at educating children and views children. So when we bring up the subject of something like sex, I feel some reluctance at handing over my child to the same people who taught me history, for example.

    My point wasn't that we should shy away from it. My parents were very open with me about it and I appreciated that. It led to some humorous situations since I occasionally had questions, not much older than a toddler, in public places, but they weathered these incidents with humor. I also was not really focusing on its controversial nature, but rather on the fact that it is an intimate, important subject area and there is no neutral set of values about it. If someone teaches my kid math using poor pedagogy my kid may end up poor in math or have a complex about their ability, etc. Not a great outcome, but also in many ways not so important and one that can be remedied via tutoring. A moron teaching my kid sex might have different and deeper effects.

    For example, one real idiot of a teacher made me not want to sing for a long, long time. I thought I was terrible, despite the protests of my parents. The teacher managed to combine poor pedagogy with a way of embarrassing all but the most confident skilled children. I am still getting that experience out of my system.
    I have a yes, no response to this. In some ways I like the idea of sex ed because some children just get a lot of lies and misinformation. So what they will get in school is probably better. On the other hand.....it may be worse or unnecessary.

    Perhaps it has gotten better. I am skeptical, but I haven't been in a US school in a while.

    agreed.

    I think my hesitation comes in because while public schools in the US, are seen as secular and somehow neutral, they are not. Now the conservative religious groups have all sorts of problems with the what they see as liberal ideas or the teaching of evolution or the acceptance of gays, etc. I have no problems with any of this. However the education is not neutral and presents to my mind a false view of the world, to varying degrees. So given that one must send one's kid to school - unless one has the means to do homeschooling - one is forced to have a particular worldview aimed at one's child. I am not saying I am against sex ed, just that I am not exactly for it either in the climate of pedagogy I think still is present in schooling today.

    You could for example break the class up into small groups and give them a set of questions they need to answer. If it was history it could be about the conditions of people in 1770 in the US. The group then has to figure out where it gets its answers, how they will divvy up the tasks, what resources are likely to be accurate, how to record what they find and how to present it. So there is a planning stage, then a research stage, then a presentation stage. The teacher does not decide which facts go into their heads and issues around what authorities to trust and why and what to do with different opinions and so on are built in. The teachers do challenge certain sources, generally. But the process is much more active on the student's part. They create, in group, their own knowledge base.

    Note: the 'answers' are much less likely to be facts, but more descriptions - in a history context.

    A question might be: what were the relationships like between native americans and colonists in 1770? Rather then some insipid memorization of dates or worship of GW's military skills. Good problems also tend towards solutions that are multifaceted. So differing opinions about the relationships between the two groups would be accepted, rather than some demand that there is only one answer.

    The whole thing is really rather complicated and the above is a mere sketch but perhaps it gets across the idea.

    The shift is from

    Fact [to be inserted]----------} child brain.

    to

    letting the children deal with much more of the process. Frankly my views are even more radical since I would tend to allow the children to have a lot of control of the 'problems' also, especially in subject areas like English and Social studies.

    Math and science obviously present rather different kinds of problems, but the overall method is very similar.
     
  18. Bells Staff Member

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    I think it is a fair point to say that abstinence only sex education isn't working. And children do need to taught what constitute as "sex" over the whole spectrum. For their own safety, but also so they know. Girls should be made aware that oral sex is still sex and can still be detrimental to their health without the proper protection, as one example. They should also be taught about safe sex and the use of condoms, pill, and other forms of contraception. The reason being is that children, and they are getting sexually active younger now, need to know so they can make an educated choice as to whether they are ready or not.

    I agree that schools should provide the basics of sexual education. But parents also need to step up and stop avoiding the issue and discuss sex with their children and they do need to do it when the children start entering puberty, if not before. Time and again I have seen parents shrug and say the school will tell them about it and the 'I don't want to tell them as it's embarrassing and I don't want to put ideas into their heads' arguments.. It's no longer good enough. It's already in their heads and they are curious. Being open with them about sex is vital.

    Children are blasted by sex from every angle, in film, music, even video games, books.. I don't want my children learning about sex as I did.. with my PE teacher who stood there in his short shorts at the front of the room and stumbling through explaining genitalia and what sex was, the 'how to make babies' lecture was hilarious as it was embarrassing for all of us in that class and then the lessons about contraception.. I still have mental images of his letting us play with condoms and the fun to be had by all by condom balloons flying through the science lab. It was uncomfortable and it was not exactly clear.. we understood less coming out of that classroom as we did going in. And this was when we were in year 8 biology. Why our normal biology teacher was not the one to do the lessons, I will never know. For some bizarre reason the school administration decided the person to teach us about sex would be our PE teachers.. who were not equipped to do it.

    I plan to have that talk with my children. It's up to parents to make sure that our children are ready for the world and that involves sex. Yes, schools should teach it, but parents also need to take an active role in explaining it and being open about it to our children.
     
  19. Doreen Valued Senior Member

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    This fits much of my own experience. There was something horribly clinical and out of context about it also. It made sex out to be something akin to a non-surgical (perhaps!?) medical intervention. I am sure some teachers handled it better, but some kind of conversation working with what children alread think is the truth and the actual lived contexts of sexual/romantic interactions seems much more appropriate. I realize this may be a can of worms - since the children's actual sexual experiences will likely come into the room - but anything else seems idiotic to me. Sex is not a similar process to intubating a patient but with a penis and a vagina. To teach sex without dealing with interpersonal dynamics and emotions is, well, loony. It is a different loony then the 'education' children get from media and from some parents, but it's still loony.

    I appreciated your story, brought me back. I can remember the same teacher talking about a cyst he had on his face, a story told with clinical deadpan and great detail that made me run out of the room to vomit in the bathroom. And I am not generally squeemish. The combination of deadpan, complete lack of affect and a rather horribly productive cyst - oh, the colors - and his overall 'vibe' was just too much.

    Needless to say he did not convey sex in a way I appreciated. Fortunately I already knew the important points.
     
  20. scott3x Banned Banned

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    I didn't say that. I think that sexuality is something that should be more open for discussion. What this means in practice is complicated. I think that the OP, which is also the presentation I gave at college is perhaps the best example I have given yet of what I've been trying to convey.

    I really don't know what you mean by "this path", so I'll leave it to your discretion to determine what path I'm taking. Being permabanned wouldn't be a large loss anyway; I haven't been here in a long time, because I found little to interest me here since you clamped down, not only on what we can talk about concerning sexuality, but also what we can talk about concerning the official 9/11 story.

    If trying to find something I find interesting to talk about is my 'fun', I guess you're right.
     
  21. scott3x Banned Banned

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    It's up to you, ofcourse. I just think that it's precisely this attitude that maintains the problem; it's part of what I was trying to convey in the OP of this post. A culture of silence on an issue that needs more light shed on it, not less.
     
  22. Bells Staff Member

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    I don't think you quite got my meaning. I really do not wish to discuss it with you after what happened last time and what you disclosed about your feelings on the matter. You know my feelings about it and I know yours. We can just leave it there. You know I am against it and I know what you feel about it. So we really do not need to relive it again.
     
  23. Tiassa Let us not launch the boat ... Valued Senior Member

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    Mod Hat - Closure

    Mod Hat — Closure

    Actually, Scott, you did. You advocated sexual contact between adults and minors.

    Look, I'm admittedly dubious about the administrative approach to your return at this point, but administrative prerogative is what it is. I had been waiting to wrap up some discussions with the administration before sorting out the mess in this thread, but I simply will not sit by while you lie. Whatever else we might say of certain decisions to introduce past issues into this particular thread, you are displaying classic predatory behavior by trying to politely present yourself as something you aren't. That absolutely will not stand.

    If you are ashamed to admit what you have advocated in the past, then quite obviously you need to reassess whether or not you should advocate it at all. I will deal with the administration on the subject of the digression in this thread. However, you will heed the warnings given you, and recognize that your continued presence at Sciforums is only by the grace of some twisted sense of due process. I had intended to let this thread run until you made what I consider an inevitable slip, and deal with your inclinations then. However, this thread is quite obviously a wreck, so we'll try it one more time. I'll be opening the new thread as soon as I have scrubbed it to my satisfaction.

    However, one last warning: Do not try to hide what you are or what you have advocated in the past. I will not give sanctuary to a predator in my jurisdiction. Indeed, while my original inclination was to give you the benefit of the doubt until you slipped up again, that lie is enough of a slip that I would now rather throw your ass out the door permanently than sully myself with any such pretense.
     
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