Education measure for Helena schools on O'Reily 7-14-10

[ElkHunter]

Wonder what the stats are on "Unwanted Pregnancies" in the 5th grade????

[Reziac]

Read Strudel's link, this clarifies a lot. Our devil's advocate may in fact be the voice crying in the wilderness.

Elk: It's not the 5th graders you have to worry about. It's the 6th, 7th, and 8th graders and beyond who didn't learn what they needed to know in the grade BEFORE it becomes an issue. Once kids are already in the habit of risky behaviour, it's a little too late to educate them.

And it's going to get a lot more risky as MT gets more kids coming from "more sophisticated" parts of the country, where teens get into sexual behaviour a lot earlier -- and where formal sex-ed is lacking to entirely absent.

There has finally been some productive research on what most strongly influences teen behaviour. For many years there have been efforts to correlate it with parents (or lack of them), financial situation, education level, drugs, crime in the neighbourhood, etc, etc. and ALL have failed to show one whit of correlation. FINALLY someone looked at peer groups, and lo and behold, THE major factor influencing teen behaviour is -- their peers. The kids they hang out with. If those are sensible normal "good kids", even a kid who'd otherwise be inclined to "go wrong" is liable to behave. If they're gang-bangers, even the best of kids from the best of homes is liable to wind up a loser.

This is also why when a kid is going wrong, the parents are often the last to know. Parents are not kids' peer group, and they won't talk to you like they will their peers.

Point is, if you have a large influx of kids whose morals and social habits differ (and remember, for the past couple decades we've been preaching tolerance to our kids for others' ways!), you'd better already have a STRONGER group of peers for your kids to identify with, and that means educated to a level of understanding WHY those "new morals" are not THEIR peer group, and are not kids THEY want to hang out with.

I would rather have a kid respond with "I already know all about those alternative forms of sex, and I know they're all just as risky, so stop asking me to do it with you" -- learned from a good sex-ed course -- than have a kid think "It's not real sex, so it's safe" because they lack that education. (Strudel's link makes this very point.)

[Mt-7]

Trustees hear hours of testimony on Helena sex education plan

[Reziac]

On a similar note, we are now Officially Too Stupid To Live -- even rulers and paper clips are too dangerous for modern children!!

Kids' science kits may take hit from safety ruling - Yahoo! News (http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20100929/ap_on_bi_ge/us_children_s_products_safety - broken link)

[strudel42]

Originally Posted by Reziac

On a similar note, we are now Officially Too Stupid To Live -- even rulers and paper clips are too dangerous for modern children!!

Kids' science kits may take hit from safety ruling - Yahoo! News (http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20100929/ap_on_bi_ge/us_children_s_products_safety - broken link)

Good lord, this is ridiculous. I swear, if everything that's supposed to be so bad for us really is that bad for us, the human race would have faced extinction long ago.

And in re. sex ed. Interesting that the curriculum has been altered. Seems the schools should have consulted parents before they started.

But it also seems to me the parents should be confident that they have parented their children well enough so that they can handle discussion of sexuality in school. The world's a hard place (there's paper clips out there, for God's sake. PAPER CLIPS!) and sheltering kids from stuff like this is not going to do them any favors.

[Reziac]

Yeah. While it's theoretically about toxins IN the rulers and paperclips, it won't stay that way for long, no more than it has for other toys. And if you haven't taught your kids not to eat rulers and paperclips... well, it doesn't matter if it's toxic or not, they've still got Issues!!

Two generations ago, 90% of Americans lived on farms. D'ya think our grandparents were 'sheltered'?? Of course not; life (and sex-ed of sorts) was what happened in the barnyard every day. And I think it's a fair statement that our grandparents grew up to have better sense than has the current more-sheltered generation. Being sheltered enforces ignorance, which reduces your ability to make sensible decisions when you do get confronted with whatever rude facts of life you'd hitherto avoided contact with.

[montygarlic]

Originally Posted by jimj

And it looks like they got the village idiots!

I'd be happy to lend out ours. We have a plethora of Village Idiots around here - and they keep running for office and getting re-elected.

Yikes!

mg

[jimj]

Originally Posted by montygarlic

I'd be happy to lend out ours. We have a plethora of Village Idiots around here - and they keep running for office and getting re-elected.

Yikes!

mg

The problem is if the villiage idiots keep getting re-elected then what does that say about the people re-electing them?
Birds of a feather????
Such a pity....

[Reziac]

Originally Posted by jimj

The problem is if the villiage idiots keep getting re-elected then what does that say about the people re-electing them?

That's an unfortunate truth, and not very flattering about either the voters or the democratic process.

[montygarlic]

Originally Posted by Reziac

That's an unfortunate truth, and not very flattering about either the voters or the democratic process.

Bingo!