Posted on 03/22/2008 5:14:13 AM PDT by wintertime
On some issues the public is ahead of its political leaders. Sex education is one of them. By substantial margins, Floridians favor providing students with information about sexually transmitted disease prevention and contraception rather than just an abstinence-only approach favored by the Bush administration. The Legislature should hear this call and put the health of Florida's teens ahead of a narrow, religiously grounded agenda.
According to a recent St. Petersburg Times poll, of the nine in 10 Florida voters who agree that the public schools should offer some form of sex eduction, only 8 percent said it should be abstinence-only. Even those respondents who described themselves as evangelical Christians generally thought the education program needed to go beyond abstinence.
The poll was taken even before the explosive results of a study by the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention were known. That study found at least one in four teenage girls in this country has a sexually transmitted disease. That startling statistic makes it even more imperative that young people receive information that leads to sound and informed decisions about sex.
Although school districts in the state are allowed to teach beyond abstinence-only, Florida receives as much as $10-million annually in federal sex education money to offer abstinence-only-until-marriage programs. The results have been demonstrably counterproductive. Research shows that abstinence-only programs don't work in delaying teen sexual activity or reducing the number of sexual partners. But recently released CDC data found that sex education programs help to keep teens from becoming sexually active before 15 years of age. There also is evidence that such programs reduce the prevalence of unprotected sex.
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(Excerpt) Read more at tampabay.com ...
Does any Freeper know how I might get this information?
That study found at least one in four teenage girls in this country has a sexually transmitted disease.
If the rate among homeschooled (and those in conservative Christian schools) girls it less than 1 in 4, then the rate among government institutionalized girls must be higher.
1 in 4 girls have a STD? Is this the wonderful socialization homeschoolers are missing? Why would any parent in their right mind subject a girl to this enviroment?
Honestly, it would be less damaging and harmful for a child to be **completely** illiterate and innumerate tan to every set foot in some of these government schools. I **seriously** mean this!
And I **seriously** agree!
However, it's more likely that the government school “education” will leave them illiterate and innumerate as well as morally and physically polluted.
But, why shoot for an A+ when you can shoot for a C or lower? So what if the casualty count is higher when aiming for less than perfection? Everyone gets to have more fun and thats the important thing, right? /sarc
Merely giving children the “facts” devoid of a religious framework is teaching the children that God is irrelevant and that they are masters of their own universe.
Yet, the government school is faced with a dilemma. It can not do two things at once. It can not teach about sexuality in a God centered framework, and exclude God at the same time. They are forced to make a binary decision. One action automatically excludes the other.
So?...How do government schools get away with this?
If they teach about sexuality in an atheistic manner they are establishing a government religious worldview of the atheistic, materialistic, secular humanist Marxists. If they teach in God centered manner they are establishing a government God-centered religious worldview as well.
When conflicts come before the courts, why don't judges examine the fundamental conflict that government schools have with freedom of conscience and the First Amendment?
The government school is the bus ministry of the State church of atheistic humanism.
See http://www.schoolandstate.org/home.htm
Now, I know many Freepers will get on me for this, but from MY EXPERIENCE many (note I didn’t say all or most, just many) homeschooled children are socially awkward at best and down right backward at worst. The problem with homeschooling is that if parents don’t make the effort to get their kids to socialize, that’s how they’ll end up. Of course their STD rates will be lower because they quite honestly just can’t get laid.
And if you think that STD rates in private schools are any lower than the general school-age population you’ve got another thing coming. They just get the “higher class” STDs.
It’s simple, you can’t fix stupid. Natural selection at its finest. STDs have been known to screw up the reproductive system. Not to mention making a partner less attractive to mate with due to the presence of the disease.
Abstinence only programs are not the way to go. Sorry but I will never agree with anyone on that point. There’s no way to prevent teenagers from having sex short of locking them up in the basement. And even then...
Teach sex ed built on facts, not dogma/(Government “Schools”) (Liberal/Marxist POV)...
the nyslimes has reported that eliot spitzer and kristin will be doing hands on demonstations for public service!!!!
every homeschooled child I have ever met was more confident, more articulate, conversed at a much higher level and with ease, tested grades above, and in every other observable way was prepared to be a better citizen by being more fully human than any of his peers. Noticeably absent from the lives of these children are all toys and distraction; noticeably present: an engaged family.
in order to prevent willful misunderstanding, let me just make the obvious correction: “all toys and distractions” should read, “all the toys and distractions,” referring (again, obviously) to the expensive and time wasting trinkets that seem to pass for “love” in many more materialistically oriented families.
Please reread my posts. I specifically wrote, "**Conservative** Christian**!" private schools
By the way, the evidence is now in. Adult homeschoolers on average are far better socially adjusted than their government instituionalized contemporaries. HSLDA is a place to check this out.
If homeschoolers were socially awkward, then it would not be having the continued growth that it is experiencing. Homeschooling continues its phenomenal growth because parents, who see and know homeschoolers, recognize it as the superior way to raise and educate a child.
Please read my tagline. Homeschooling is growing because it is a GOOD idea!
Local communities should be free to teach whatever notions they want and shouldn’t be constrained by other outside forces.
Of course, local curriculums should be financed by local funds, not Federal taxes!
I wonder if Muslims will be required to take this Sex Ed stuff or if they will get a pass ‘cause of their religion. After all, some religion are (apparently) more worthy of consideration than others by the Liberals.
“...here’s no way to prevent teenagers from having sex short of locking them up..”
First I will agree with you that from my own experience too that home-schooling is not the answer to all gov-school-horrors. I have in fact seen more bad home-schooled kids than good ones.
Secondly, my wife is an ex-teacher and in her experience we’ve seen that the PARENTS, are generally the enablers of the teen sex problems. Also, most school administrators can’t really discipline because of the attitude of most parents that, “My kids can do no wrong, it is the teacher/administration that can’t handle my precious child.”
Lastly, if we could end/cut/stop the TV from selling sex to kids starting at age 3 we could make some progress. Again it is hard to control your teenager when all the other parents are unable/unwilling to take control of their kids believing that any problem can be blamed on the schools.
Additionally:
1. Fifty years ago when I was in school it was the teachers job to point out and try to correct problems with the child. Parents were there to reinforce the discipline at home and support the teacher.
2. We have become completely upside-down in the current system.
3. We have morphed to - kids having the job of pointing out problems with their teachers and that becoming the main object of public schooling. (Seriously, parents will become completely irate with any perceived problem their little darlings report.)
How about not sleeping around all the time with multiple partners? There's no way to get these unless people are being "loose." Values is the problem here, and this article is more of the same problem.
Why would any parent in their right mind subject a boy to this enviroment?
I’m not going to get on you, it’s obvious that your experience is severely limited to non-existent. No problem. You’re allowed to not know what homeschooled young people are like.
You probably take every shyness and natural reticence as some evidence of maladjustment. That reflects more on your lack of discernment than on any homeschooler.
:)
That's very true from what I've seen - and they much better values (and smarter). Granted, I'm not sure it is homeschooling as much as the fact that these parents take a much greater interest in actually raising their own children and being involved in teaching them the right work ethic and values. Parents with the same attitude sending their kids to other schools also achieve the same result...unfortunately, many parents simply do not.
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There is no possible way to untie values from religion. And,,,there is no possible way to teach about sex in a values free environment.
Therefore...Government can not teach sex education without stepping in great big dog poopy pile of First Amendment violations!
Truth is: Good ideas win! Why? Because conservative people are not stupid.
The difference being,
Conservatives have ideas.
Liberals/Progressives have Feeeelings, nothing more than feelings.
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