Parents fume over salacious sex lesson | Chicago Tribune

A health teacher at Wolcott School in Thornton made 8th graders read aloud explicit questions about oral sex and masturbation during a sex-education lesson this week, outraging parents who demanded the teacher be disciplined.

Here's the Tribune story "Parents fume over salacious sex lesson"

Here's the material that was on the four page handout the kids read aloud: "General Questions about Sex"

I don't get it.  For the past few years, we've been called prudes, old-fashioned, religious bigots, Puritans and every other intended type of insult possible for revealing the kind of out-of-kelter, sexually explicit and no-holds-barred type of porn junior high and high school age kids are getting under the guise of comprehensive sex ed. 

Is it that the naked truth is offensive only when it is viewable in black and white and not just someone's preconceived notion of inappropriate sex talk? 

Wake up, folks.  Parents should be upset.  Their children's innocence is being robbed during school hours and at the behest of taxpayer-funded instructors.

Comments

[Stefen Malone]

Eighth grade is a good time for these youngsters to be getting practical sex information. When I was their age, in the 1950s, I was ignorant of female anatomy; sex education consisted of a lecture to avoid syphilis; "girlie" magazines rarely showed even pubic hair; and parents' talk about the birds and bees was uncomfortable for everyone and imparted little or no useful information.

Many people find sexual matters in some way taboo for discussion. But that reticence actually fosters the rampant pornography, sexualization and sometimes perversion we see in current society. In addition, taken to the extreme of total sexual ignorance and repression, it creates the psychotic Islamic perverts who think they'll get 72 virgins in an afterlife if they kill Americans.

People thirteen and fourteen years old are quite capable of handling sexually oriented facts. If parents want their children to not have this information, they should be able to withdraw them from class. However, a better approach would be to put the information in a context of the family's values and expectations of social reponsibility.

[notquitehip]

That is an interesting little history lesson concerning the 1950's. Thank you. Now back to today.

Why is explicit sex education so important to be taught in public schools? I thought we were attempting to educate children to a basic level to where they could enter the workforce after graduation. How does this sort of education facilitate that goal?

"Many people find sexual matters in some way taboo for discussion. But that reticence actually fosters the rampant pornography, sexualization and sometimes perversion we see in current society."

Could you let us know the source of this little gem or did you just make it up? I would submit that Chicago's gay pride parade, where nothing seems to be taboo not only for discussion but also for display "fosters the rampant pornography, sexualization and sometimes perversion we see in current society."

"In addition, taken to the extreme of total sexual ignorance and repression, it creates the psychotic Islamic perverts who think they'll get 72 virgins in an afterlife if they kill Americans."

You should not take extremes and try to apply them as the norm. You should esspecially not compare what goes on in places where "psychotic Islamic perverts" live with what happens here. Also "psychotic Islamic perverts" did not make up the "72 virgins" doctrine because they are sexually ignorant or repressed, but rather they get it from their religious teaching. Islamic women may be sexually ignorant and repressed, but the guys trying to kill Americans can get temporary marriages, multiple wives, they do not receive capital punishment for adultery (the women do), and they do not receive capital punishment for rape (the women they rape do). No, they are not sexually ignorant or repressed, rather they live life large like Bill Clinton.

I am sorry to go off topic here but, I have a question about this 72 virgin thing the Muslims have. I have heard other numbers of virgins as part of the deal, but the number is not important. If a jihadi kills Americans, goes to heaven, and gets his 72 virgins, what happens after the first night? I presume one of the 72 is no longer a virgin. Does the jihadi then trade her in for a new virgin? Or, does he have to worry about spacing his liaisons with his 72 virgins over all eternity?

Back to the topic.

"People thirteen and fourteen years old are quite capable of handling sexually oriented facts."

But they are not capable of handling sexually oriented facts as adults. They are children who as a result of an immature, as in, not fully developed brain, act impulsively with little self-control.

Even so, we should be ensuring they can handle math facts, spelling facts, reading and writing facts in our schools so they go off to college or otherwise prepare for gainful employment.

You do not have to be a prude to oppose explicit sex education in our public schools. When the schools start getting the important educational priorities completed, then maybe we can talk about some of these other subjects.

[cole]

I agree that 8th grade is a good time for children to be learning sexuality. In fact, there isn't a bad time to learn about sex, in my opinion. I started learning some time around second or third grade and pretty much had some sort of sex education every year until I was a Sophomore in high school. I can't say from personal experience but I imagine my sex education was a vast improvement over Stefen's 50's education and still is an improvement over much of the sex education which is being provided.

Sex education is a must and there is absolutely room for it beside reading, writing and 'rithmatic. It doesn't have to be either-or. At 13, the brain may not be fully developed and I completely agree about the behaviour young teenagers will generally display, but none of this stops them from acting as though they are adults, especially when it comes to sex. And I'd hazard a guess that most adults developed their opinions about sex sometime in their adolescence and it probably hasn't changed a great deal since then.

But there is a line which has been crossed here. One can answer the questions which students (and even adults!) are afraid to voice and even some they might not even have known they were wondering in an informative manner and a tactful and appropriate manner on top of this. The purpose of sex education is to, hopefully, equip these young adults with the knowledge needed to make wise sexual decisions when they come to that point in their lives which will probably happen much sooner than any of us would really like and sex education can help them to perhaps postpone risky these risky endeavors or at the very least, think twice and use a condom.

But let me tell say that I think you'd be hard pressed to find an 8th grader who is as innocent as the picture you're trying to paint. Even if they're not participating in sex, they know about it and if not from an educational atmosphere where they can learn the facts about it, then from a group of peers who only have a hazy idea of what sexuality actually entails and most of that is probably incorrect, anyway.

That list has many appropriate questions, most of them in fact. What is perhaps too explicit are the answers. One can appropriately ask and answer "How do you have sex?" but I do not think that was the case here (just to give an example.) I think the list of questions would be a good basis to go off of, with some removed and many answers toned down.

So was a line crossed? Sure. Should it have happened? Probably not. Can a lesson be learned? Absolutely. Does this reduce the necessity of the sex education which can be garnered from such a list? No.

[Bob Schmidt]

As Dr Dean Adele (no prude) said on WLS this Sunday, these programs like sex education, DARE, Anorexia/Bolemia awareness, etc have unintended consequences in that they result in more, not less, of that activity.

Despite what Stefan says, those who miss Sex Ed, DARE, etc (whether due to homeschooling, parents pulling them out, or just a coincidental illness) have a lower rate of the behavior than those who do attend those classes. That is true, even whan "normed" for other factors. For example, compare all Baptist teens or all Catholic teens with each other. That is the statistics.

Now wouldn't it have been nice if there were classes on Stock Market Education and Real Estate Education and Upward Mobility Education instead of Sex Ed?

[David E. Smith]

How many more reasons will the NEA give us to take our children out of public schools and either home educate them or send them to private schools?