Misleading info about fertility - grr

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goravens

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I’ve posted before on my frustrations in my liberal, many times anti-Christian social work master’s program. Last night my instructor was going over some info on teen pregnancy, abortion rates, condom failure, etc. He went onto say that the female body is doing “everything it can to get pregnant”, that a woman can get pregnant at any time even if she is not ovulating, the woman’s body releases more than one egg a cycle, and that a woman can become pregnant while on her period because “if this stimulation is hard enough, it will stimulate the ovaries to produce an egg.”

As someone who has researched nfp and fertility for several years now, I was fuming. All through class I thought about how I could tactfully confront him after class on how misleading and incorrect the info was. But after class, a lot of my classmates milled around in the room and I thought it best to not discuss this with him in front of a lot of other people. I do plan to address it with him because I think it’s important that he at least be given some shred of factual information on this topic. What made me really sad was all the gasps and shocked looks from women in my class when he was stating these “facts”. You could almost hear them making a mental note to go out and get birth control.

I’m not generally a confrontational person and I imagine he won’t believe what I explain anyway, but I think it’s important to witness and I really feel the Holy Spirit moving my heart on this. Any thoughts on this, how to approach him, resources to present, etc? And please let me know if I’m about to stick my foot in my mouth in anyway in addressing his “facts”.
 
Unfortunately the best way to have handled it would probably have been to politely question his facts right then and there for the whole class to hear.

Because of your so-called descretion, all your classmates may never get to hear the other side of the story.

There’s been a number of threads on these boards about how we should be more nicey-nice with our faith, keep it to ourselves, and shouldn’t ever hurt anyone. But this is the result. Because we fear offending people, we end up putting the truth under a bushel basket.

There’s a difference between hurt and harm! We should never harm anyone, but sometimes we have to hurt them. Doctor’s swear in their hypocratic oath never to do harm, yet here I sit recovering from a painful surgery. Did it harm me? No. Did it hurt? Yes!
 
Well, a tenth grade biology book wrapped with a bow would probably not garner any favor from him! 🙂

The website www.omsoul.com and www.hh76.com have info on contraception, abortion, etc. Also, contact ALL (www.all.org) and their STOPP division to get statistics on abortion, teen pregnancy, etc.

A very good book on the way female reproduction works, and how charting the cycle works, is the book Taking Charge of Your Fertility by Toni Weschler. If you want to spring for a copy-- maybe you can find a used one-- that should be plenty of info to completely refute his ridiculous assertions.

Also, I’d just confront him and demand his sources for this information. He probably won’t be able to give one in as much as he was spouting nonsense.
 
Also, I’d just confront him and demand his sources for this information. He probably won’t be able to give one in as much as he was spouting nonsense.
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Yes this is a very good approach when confronting him in front of the class. Rather than countering his information with information of your own, just ask him to back up his own. If he has something to back it up, then you can look it up, find the errors, refute it with better research. Then report back to class more prepared. That way you won’t have to “think on your feet”.

Please note that you have to demonstrate why your sources are better though. Don’t necessarily worry about convincing him. What you really want is to show the rest of the class some better information. The professor, in his pride, is likely to disregard anything you tell him, and will remain unconvinced. But that doesn’t matter, it’s his students that may come to see what is true and what isn’t.
 
Well if that was true, I’d be pregnant by now. Infertility would be a fairy tale. Maybe in la-la-land :).
 
Black Jaque:
Unfortunately the best way to have handled it would probably have been to politely question his facts right then and there for the whole class to hear.

Because of your so-called descretion, all your classmates may never get to hear the other side of the story.

There’s been a number of threads on these boards about how we should be more nicey-nice with our faith, keep it to ourselves, and shouldn’t ever hurt anyone. But this is the result. Because we fear offending people, we end up putting the truth under a bushel basket.

There’s a difference between hurt and harm! We should never harm anyone, but sometimes we have to hurt them. Doctor’s swear in their hypocratic oath never to do harm, yet here I sit recovering from a painful surgery. Did it harm me? No. Did it hurt? Yes!
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The reason I elected to not bring it up at the point in class is because my instructor has a very off-putting manner. Any question or “devil’s advocate” position a student has taken in this class, has resulted in him refuting that student completely almost to the point of belittling them. And since I’m not good at confrontation, I felt he would shoot something back at me and I’d be sitting there red as a beet, saying “uuuhhh…” with my point looking completely foolish to my classmates. I hear what you’re saying, but I thought my doing that could actually make things worse.
 
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goravens:
The reason I elected to not bring it up at the point in class is because my instructor has a very off-putting manner. Any question or “devil’s advocate” position a student has taken in this class, has resulted in him refuting that student completely almost to the point of belittling them. And since I’m not good at confrontation, I felt he would shoot something back at me and I’d be sitting there red as a beet, saying “uuuhhh…” with my point looking completely foolish to my classmates. I hear what you’re saying, but I thought my doing that could actually make things worse.
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My husband is a university professor and I know he has told me that there have been students who went to the administration when a professor was out of line. It sounds like this guy is definitely out of line. You are paying mongo bucks to attend this institution, why should you have to be receiving wrong information. Think about going above his head. Or talk to him first and if he doesn’t admit his error or gets an attitude, then go above his head. A science or math instructor would not be allowed to teach wrong facts, why should this guy???

Let us know what happens, whatever you decide to do!
 
I agree, go above his head and report him. It is inexcusable for anybody who is supposed to be “educated” to not have a clue about human reproduction. :nope:

I also agree with challenging him to produce his sources for this bogus information.
 
When our child-birth prep class teacher said, “There is no way to tell that you have ovulated until after your first period post-partum,” I raised my hand right away and carefully corrected her.

I would recommend going above his head too, especially since he is condescending. Do your research and take that with you when you meet with his boss. If you can wow his boss with the concept of breakthrough bleeding during ovulation being confused with menstrual bleeding, the boss might just think you are better equipped to teach the class. Wouldn’t that be a hoot!?
 
My mother gave me alot of this junk your professor is espousing to try to scare me from pre-marital sex. If only she would have just told me the dang truth (let alone showed a little faith and trust in me- long story short- she got pregnant at 19, assumed I was having sex at 17 (I wasn’t) and accused me every chance she got so when I did lose my virginity (thanks to a rape) she called me a whore), I would have never gone down the road I did. I’m a stubborn person and as much as I wanted to believe her, I played with fire and not only proved her wrong, got burned. God has given me three girls to raise (so far) so I get a “redeeming” chance to teach the right things (at least that’s how I feel about it).

I had a World Religions professor that was very openly anti-Catholic. I wasn’t a practicing Catholic at the time but hey, she was bashing some of the most obvious things that even I could defend and I did confront her during class one time. She got very angry and I battled an F the rest of the class. I had to go above her head to secure the authenticity of my grade instead of it being based on her emotions. But it was the most well fought for grade!!! It was worth it!!!
 
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