Posted on 10/05/2005 4:46:00 PM PDT by tuffydoodle
Oh, so this is the enlightenment?
???
I need more details from you.
You're right, it has to come from the parents though. Sure, a lot of parents don't talk to their kids... that's a big problem. It's not the schools job. Do you know they have had parents children taken away for neglect because the school felt they were keeping them from sex-ed?
No lie.
I too, being originally from the South know of what you speak (stepfathers raping and molesting daughters, mothers doing nothing... sending them away to have their babies with their aunts, sending the child back), a lot of times they have been told (like you said, but not before), they are the lowest of the low... and there goes the rest of their life, either nymphos or psychologically damaged for a large part of their lives.
You can teach your children about sex without exposing them to disturbing literature. That way they can be informed but still innocent.
When my kids were 7 and 9 I took them to the library and showed them the same book I read when I was their age. It describes reproduction and birth in a matter of fact way.
And afterwards they were still normal kids. They are 16 and 14 now and good kids. There is no sign that the book did them any harm, or me either.
You can teach your children about sex without exposing them to disturbing literature. That way they can be informed but still innocent.
When my kids were 7 and 9 I took them to the library and showed them the same book I read when I was their age. It describes reproduction and birth in a matter of fact way.
And afterwards they were still normal kids. They are 16 and 14 now and good kids. There is no sign that the book did them any harm, or me either.
Erm,
I'd like to think that some of us manage to make a decent enough life for ourselves ;)
'A Tree Grows in Brooklyn' has no literary standing.
How would you define graphic? Foul Language? Fornication? Scatology? Incest? Cross dresssing? Because that would eliminate much Shakespeare and most Medieval Literature not to mention Faulkner and Hemmingway.
Who decided that?
And aren't there books with "literary standing" that don't involve deviant sex? (and aren't mind numbingly boring)
Where do you draw the line regarding reading material for 16 year old kids? Is anything "off limits"?
I've yet to see a literary scholar defend it as a sigificant piece of American writing. I'm sure there are people who think Stephen King should taught. That doesn't make his work anything more then Penny Dreadfuls. 'One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest' is one of the key novels of the Beat Movement and certainly isn't boring.
I think at 16 when you're just talking about text they should be able to handle the entire Literary Canon. We read 'The Sound and the Fury' in High school, an undeniable American classic and quite explicit in terms of subject matter. And please note I'm talking about 15 and up teenagers not 9 or 10 year olds.
One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest is one of my all time favorite books but it is absolutely not appropriate reading material for 16 year old kids. I'm not really concerned with what a literary scholar thinks when it comes to exposing my kids to adult material.
Literature is a matter of opinion. It's not based on facts, like math.
The kids in the article are 10 & 13.
My 10 year only learned much about sex this past year because I told it to him.
My almost 9 year old daughters only know one bad word A**.
My kids all go to public school, and they are all still very innocent.
It's not that difficult to remove them from all of that.
We use the parental controls on the TV.
We limit what movies they see.
We limit what songs they listen to.
We monitor what books they read.
We only have playdates with kids whose parents are also very restrictive.
The kids are 10 & 13. Reread the article.
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