A few words about sex education.

So a few days ago some cleverdick figured out that a quarter of American teenage girls has an STD. (Why did they only test girls? And how did they choose their participants, anyway?) The TV news prompted a lively household argument, with much differing opinion about what sex education actually was, never mind what it should be. (My housemates' experiences indicate that in the late 80s/early 90s, sex ed in American public education was actually sex ed, but it withered about 10 years ago. The sex ed I got was clinical, quite thorough in the limited realm of devices and widgets, entirely centred on PIV, and, at 15, far too late.)

One of said housemates - the one who'd had sex ed at the end of the 80s - said the STD epidemics shouldn't be blamed on poor education. That parents are meant to be responsible for these things, not schools.

Um. I guess that might work if we lived in a magical world where all teenagers are parented. They're not. I wasn't. All the information about sex I got outside school was from dubious girly magazines and from bad sf/f books. If you think schools shouldn't be responsible for sex ed, then...what do you think should happen to children with little or no parenting? Is it right to expose us to a health crisis because of something the parenting we never had didn't provide? Do we deserve that?

This strongly reminded me of the people who say single-parent families are A Bad Thing that creates Evil People; yeah, and what are kids who don't have two parents meant to do about that? Suck it up?


This comes at a time of iiinteresting state education wanks in the UK news; apparently 'school is the last moral force'. This is less wanky when you realise the headline-makers have said 'moral' when they really mean 'social':

They now sometimes had to teach social skills such as eating a meal together.

"Schools have a much stronger role in bringing up children than in previous years," Dr Dunford said.

In his speech, Dr Dunford told heads and senior staff that for too many children, school was the "only solid bedrock in their lives".

He highlighted how schools were now expected to set rules about basic behaviour which once would have been the responsibility of parents and the wider community.

Having bedrock is not about morality. (Though it reminds me of she who said that sin is when you treat people as things; we've built a world that puts people last). It's about society, and about what structures are going to catch those of us that have been tossed down the cracks.

Meanwhile, schools absolutely have to prevent children from being fat. Anything but fat. As many STDs as your Daily Fail sexphobic rhetoric can provide, but not fat!