Sex-Ed: A Catholic mother’s conviction

[heidi_storage]

Parents should give their children accurate, appropriate, morally contextualized information about the reproductive system. Nevertheless, parents have the right to decide what is appropriate for their minor children–not the school.

That said, I suspect that this story is being reported on in a biased, sensationalist manner. I bet that it isn’t just a matter of “Listen to our erotic sex ed courses, or be kicked out!” The school doesn’t really have the same freedom to defend itself to the press as the mother does to complain.

 

[JimG]

Parents should give their children accurate, appropriate, morally contextualized information about the reproductive system. Nevertheless, parents have the right to decide what is appropriate for their minor children–not the school.

That said, I suspect that this story is being reported on in a biased, sensationalist manner. I bet that it isn’t just a matter of “Listen to our erotic sex ed courses, or be kicked out!” The school doesn’t really have the same freedom to defend itself to the press as the mother does to complain.

To me, the key issue is that parents have the primary right–and responsibility–to educate their children in these matters. They know their children best. And if the parents wish for their child to opt-out of a sex ed program that they believe is inappropriate, they should have the right to do that without the child being kicked out of school.

 

[heidi_storage]

To me, the key issue is that parents have the primary right–and responsibility–to educate their children in these matters. They know their children best. And if the parents wish for their child to opt-out of a sex ed program that they believe is inappropriate, they should have the right to do that without the child being kicked out of school.

I agree with you. I just suspect that we aren’t hearing a complete, unbiased account of what happened.

 

[Xantippe]

Yep. I’m in a Facebook group that deals with women’s health, and you would be amazed by the sheer number of women who think that normal cervical mucus discharge means that they have some sort of infection, or possibly cancer. Others have conditions that could render them sub-fertile or infertile if they don’t receive appropriate treatment in a timely fashion, but again, don’t necessarily realize it for quite a while.

My parents were extremely traditionalist, and never really had the talk with us. I remember Mother getting sloshed one night and mumbling something about using pads if we ever noticed bleeding, but that was it. Back then, my go-to resource was the encyclopedia, which was at least accurate as to the basics of sex and anatomy but was certainly lacking in other areas.

I do remember spending about three years when I first started cycling being intermittently terrified that I was somehow accidentally pregnant via various impossible means–lying down on my parents’ bed, using the same bathroom as some male friend of the family, etc. And look at the various threads that crop up here from time to time by people worried they’re sinning by having sexual dreams, which are perfectly normal during adolescence and not at all sinful as such.

Lastly, in the case of men and women and anatomy–well, at the risk of being blunt, guys can generally see their sex organs just by glancing down, and there are fewer areas and fewer normal-but-widely-varying differences in appearance. A potentially health-problem-signifying change is fairly easy to notice. For women, it’s not as simple.

I think being scared of being randomly pregnant is not at all uncommon among young girls.

I was probably engaged or a newlywed before I realized that my weird low 97-something body temperatures that had puzzled me for years weren’t weird at all, but just my normal pre-ovulatory temperature. Nobody ever tells you that while 98.6 is the average body temperature, that doesn’t really apply to fertile women.

Yeah, I think a lot of parents chicken out of “the talk”, and not all kids are good at ferreting out appropriate information. And why the heck should they have to do that on their own? Why should we just turn kids lose in this very important area and hope for the best?

Medical procedures for women can be pretty invasive. OP, think about how terrifying that would be for a girl or young woman that didn’t actually know what was going on?

Yes, we do need to know about our bodies, because we are going to be responsible for them our entire adult lives.

Or how are kids or young people supposed to know if people in authority are being inappropriate or abusive if they don’t have a pretty good sense of what is appropriate and what is inappropriate behavior?

Or how is one supposed to date appropriately without a working knowledge of arousal in one’s own or the other sex? How can one avoid arousal or manage it if one doesn’t know anything about it? Additionally, if one does not experience a normal level of arousal, that’s important information, as it would be a challenge for marriage.

Plus, how can one decide if one is willing to marry at all if one doesn’t have a working idea of what is involved?

 

[Xantippe]

Parents should give their children accurate, appropriate, morally contextualized information about the reproductive system. Nevertheless, parents have the right to decide what is appropriate for their minor children–not the school.

That said, I suspect that this story is being reported on in a biased, sensationalist manner. I bet that it isn’t just a matter of “Listen to our erotic sex ed courses, or be kicked out!” The school doesn’t really have the same freedom to defend itself to the press as the mother does to complain.

Right.

 

[SusanneT]

Parents should give their children accurate, appropriate, morally contextualized information about the reproductive system. Nevertheless, parents have the right to decide what is appropriate for their minor children–not the school.

That said, I suspect that this story is being reported on in a biased, sensationalist manner. I bet that it isn’t just a matter of “Listen to our erotic sex ed courses, or be kicked out!” The school doesn’t really have the same freedom to defend itself to the press as the mother does to complain.

I agree completely I think that education about ‘sex’ in which I include details of the form and function of the reproductive organs should be entirely at the parents discretion, age appropriate and from the start based in Catholic moral teaching.

 

[Xantippe]

I agree completely I think that education about ‘sex’ in which I include details of the form and function of the reproductive organs should be entirely at the parents discretion, age appropriate and from the start based in Catholic moral teaching.

But then again, if you sign up with a particular private school, you are signing up for whatever they choose to offer. It tends to be a package deal.

So, it probably does make sense for a private school (which is chosen by families) to offer less latitude than a public school (that students are obligated to attend if their parents can’t make other arrangements).

But if a private school does take that hard-line take-it-or-leave-it approach it would be a good idea to announce that well in advance.

 

[SusanneT]

But then again, if you sign up with a particular private school, you are signing up for whatever they choose to offer. It tends to be a package deal.

So, it probably does make sense for a private school (which is chosen by families) to offer less latitude than a public school (that students are obligated to attend if their parents can’t make other arrangements).

But if a private school does take that hard-line take-it-or-leave-it approach it would be a good idea to announce that well in advance.

I would agree with that although as a point of principle I don’t think sex education should be forced on anyone.

 

[Xantippe]

On reflection, certain actual academic subjects are going to get weird if high school students don’t have some basic knowledge of the facts of life.

For example, consider what a hole in the knowledge of a high school student studying advanced biology (DNA, genetics, natural selection, meiosis, etc.) not to have any idea how the father’s DNA gets mixed up with the mother’s DNA. And consider how many awkward moments the biology teacher is spared if they know that that’s all been taken care of in health class.

Likewise, consider the kind of classic literature that high school students traditionally read–The Scarlet Letter, To Kill a Mocking Bird, etc. Imagine being an English teacher who gets to answer the question–what exactly is Tom Robinson accused of doing to Mayella Ewell? There are doubtless other major classics that will cause similar problems.

Barring unusual circumstances, a high school student needs high school level understanding of human biology just even to deal with their other coursework adequately.

 

[SusanneT]

The biological information yes. But unlike for example the liver, every thing which we do with our reproductive organs has a serious moral importance because the creation of life is very much Gods work and our bodies are essentially the vessel of his love. Beyond the basic biology children cannot be educated without a moral framework forming a critical part of that education

 

[JimG]

A physician was quoted as saying that instruction on the facts of life took about 20 minutes at the most. The mechanics of how sexual intercourse takes place are not that difficult to convey. If a child is old enough to have this talk, presumably he or she suspected there was some reason for having two sexes. No graphics are needed.

And if kids don’t know the basics before high school biology, they can learn them in about 20 minutes. (My own HS biology class covered mostly frogs, starfish, planaria, and animal classification.)

Secondly, the private school we are considering here is a Catholic private school, teaching a co-ed class. It is the Catholic Church which teaches that parents are the primary educators of their children. With such a view, it seems that parents ought to be accorded at least an opt out option.

And if kids really don’t know the facts of life by the teen years, and the parents don’t teach them, there is always the library. Assuming they still read.

And of course, we hope that they are taught the moral facts of life as well.