I recently (well, a few years ago) went through sex education in schools. They don't really teach you sex, as much as why you shouldn't have sex. Even when they're teaching contraception, the consistent emphasis on only x% effective really cuts out student interest. It's almost like saying, "yeah we have a method or preventing HIV transmission, but it doesn't really work." While it might seem like a good idea at first, I found it to quickly invoke the I'm not listening anymore response.
Next, is the issue of effectiveness. Personally, I've been shown way so many gross images of venereal diseases, that I I won't even touch without knowing I have protection. Unfortunately, this doesn't follow through for a lot of other kids who went through the same education as I did. "I was drunk", "we didn't have any", "it doesn't feel as good", and "it's too much work" are all (yes I know it's sad) frequently cited responses among people I know.
Thirdly, and most troublesome of all, some people don't care that they're spreading diseases. I recently found out someone I knew was receiving treatment for Hep B. I asked her when she found out, believing this to be a recent development. "I've had it all my life," she responds. I walked out of the room. She's quite active, and her disdain for condoms is legendary. How anyone can exhibit that kind of carelessness is honestly, beyond me.
Rather than force education, I feel we might have to take a completely different approach. Teaching is great, but it doesn't work when kids don't want to listen or don't care. Perhaps we need to stress the why here, rather than the how.
Lastly - I know this is really aside the point of this article, but schools should probably also teach how to have sex properly. Not using condoms, but common erogenous zones, sensing feedback, appropriate pressure, etc. It's kind of sad that we learn all these things by exploration, again and again, generation after generation. I think it's about time we standardized it. Everyone needs to (well, almost everyone) have sex one day, anyway. Might as well at least have fun.
She actually did disclose it to the OP. So I don't see the problem. He just doesn't like the idea of people with Hep B having sex, I suspect. But as per the facts we have, it sounds to me like she's doing the right thing.
The reason I asked is because I've had knowingly had unprotected sex with a Heb B positive person. I had had a successful vaccination (meaning the antibodies were detectable in my blood) and consequently never got infected from him.
He disclosed this to me before we had sex. I told him "no big deal" because I had the antibodies. So just because the girl is having unprotected sex and hep B positive doesn't mean she's irresponsible, as long as her partners have had a successful vaccination.
(It is important to verify that your vaccination "took" however, before having sex with a hep B pos person.)
The school gives this guy a great amount of latitude and it's great that they do because he's truly knowledgeable, does a lot of research and helps his students a lot.
But, for every one of him, there are many others that, given the same latitude, will instead foist their pre-conceived ideas on students and insist that their view of sexual life, however either perverted or abnormally repressive it may be, is the way to go.
It's a hard problem with no easy solution because it involves a great many number of humans.
I really wish all sex-ed could be as great as this school has but I feel like a pessimist when I say that if that amount of latitude was given to every teacher that there would be a regular and constant amount of disasters created.
(Though I do agree that we can do way way better than our current sex-ed curriculum which is absolutely abysmal.. we need something that will at the very least address and provide some counter-points to the vast amounts of hardcore pornography now easily accessible.)
> "will instead foist their pre-conceived ideas on students
and insist that their view of sexual life, however either
perverted or abnormally repressive it may be, is the way
to go"
And he's not? Or is it that you agree with his moral stance that you see it that way?
This particular instructor is an advocate for his standards, whether he intends to or not. He's gay, and according to the article approves of pretty much everyone being sexually active at 17 if they wish.
There are moral and emotional reasons to disagree with these, and I'm disappointed that the article doesn't highlight or speak approvingly of "waiting" or abstinence. To even suggest such things in this context makes one a pariah.
Yes, I agree abstinence-only education in public schools doesn't seem as effective as other curricular plans, particularly as it's usually not complemented by abstinence-only reinforcement at home. I'm pleased that he can discuss relationships, communication, and encourages students to think both long term and of those other than themselves. But all of that doesn't mean he's not advocating some moral stance.
I don't really see what specific stances he's taking in the article. The thing he seems to do and do well (from reading the article) is have open conversations about everything and let the kids have open dialogue in a controlled fashion.
He indicated that he may not have issues with 17 year olds having a healthy active sexual life but he wasn't preaching that they definitely should be.
Yes ... part of my point is our collective social morality is formed by whether (and which ones and how many) people agree with a particular philosophy. It's reflected in research on the stages of moral development (see, e.g., Kohlberg).
One can't help but advocate for things they believe in by the way they live their life. (As a corollary, trying to have independent journalists is an impossible ideal; compare NY Times and Washington Post.) Trying to suggest he's not advocating his view of morality is silly, just as someone suggesting I don't advocate for mine would be, even should I attempt to be even-handed.
But, for every one of him, there are many others that, given the same latitude, will instead foist their pre-conceived ideas on students and insist that their view of sexual life, however either perverted or abnormally repressive it may be, is the way to go.
Couldn't you replace "sexual life" with almost any other subject though? It's the same with all subjects that there are good and bad teachers and each one, the good and the bad, are going to influence their students.
Once we get into that discussion it's more about being able to find and retain the good teachers and being able to remove the inadequate one's which, I grant you, in the United States is definitely very hard to do.
I find myself somewhat agreeing with the general sentiment of your final paragraph. But "I think it's about time we standardized it" is really rubbing me the wrong way (honestly, not pun initially intended). Either you don't mean that how it sounds or you are massively underestimating the variety of sexual activities that humans engage in and enjoy.
Just with the examples you give (common erogenous zones, sensing feedback, appropriate pressure) there are massive differences between what one person might find enjoyable compared to another. Can you expand on what you would have in mind?
The fully generalizable things you can teach would be communication, consent, and respect. But really, a standardized curriculum for sex sounds kind of weird. People would think they're dirty perverts for coming up with something that isn't in the standardized curriculum.
I think it's less about pure education and more about a safe, controlled environment to have open and honest communication.
As you suggest it's a very complex subject with many questions having no generally applicable answers. However, being able to discuss such things between the sexes and with some mature guidance can remove a lot of humility and hopefully provide at least a little enlightenment.
That being said, I'm not entirely sure where this discussion should take place (i.e. is school the right place, I don't know).
Very much agreed. But I also think we're looking at the problem in a somewhat more isolated context than would be required to effect true improvement. By which I mean, if we are to achieve a safe, controlled environment to have open and honest communication about sex that includes some mature guidance, then a more systemic change in English speaking society as a whole is required. So rather than changes being effected at school, or at home, or somewhere else, I would suggest that change is needed at school and at home and in a wider sense across society.
Looking to existing attitudes and models in Europe might be a good starting point. Because what they do (especially the Scandinavians) works a hell of a lot better than what we do ("we" being English speaking people in general terms).
The original link of this thread, which talks about the sex ed classes of a Mr Al Vernacchio, does strike me as a pretty detailed example of the kind of model that some European countries are practicing.
And I'll finish with another example from my own experience that illustrates the wider difference in attitude that I alluded to: I visited Germany about 6 or so years ago. One day we went to an area near Potsdam, I think it was Wannsee. This area has a lot of beautiful old architecture and park land and people can swim in some of these parks because they back onto a lake but this area is still very much a developed part of the Berlin/Potsdam area.
We went there with a small group of people, got lake-side and people started taking their clothes off to swim naked in the lake. This was a group of male and female people, almost none of which were in any kind of intimate relationship with each other. And in the middle of the day, with streets nearby and many people walking around the park and surrounding area. It wasn't specifically designated as a nude swimming area, it was just a swimming area and some people swam nude, some didn't and neither caused any issues for anyone.
This is one example that I noticed while in Europe but there were more of these situations where nudity or sex were treated in just a very mature and reasonable way. Not as something that should be shunned and feared out of some kind of puritan obsession with the subject; which in its self I think is fuelled by deeply unsatisfied sexual desires.
My partner of nearly 10 years is German and while I do feel that I've had a fairly long history of exposure to their culture through her, nor can I say that I am able to speak authoritatively on all Germans or all stratas of their culture. Certainly Germany and wider Europe are not made up of people who have an entirely homogenous attitude towards sexuality. And as you would of course know, it's not like you can just walk naked through any street in Berlin without causing a fuss. But having lived in Germany, I'm sure you understand the subtle difference in the European attitude that I'm trying to illustrate.
I think you're putting the horse before the cart. I'm pretty sceptical that anyone is 'fundamentally wired' any differently from anyone else. We're all products of our society and even if a certain set of social conventions are deeply baked into the history of a particular culture, that shouldn't mean that said social conventions should be mistaken for some form of innate attribute or that they cannot be re-examined if they are found to be detrimental. I'm not implying that this is necessarily what you meant, I'm just pointing out that its a slippery slope from 'fundamentally wired for X' to 'can't change X'.
Addressing your last point--I don't think that would really be all that effective. It's like teaching a driving course without getting in a car. The best you can really do is go over the basic safety rules.
I recently (well, a few years ago) went through functional programming in schools. They don't really teach you functional programming, as much as why you shouldn't program imperatively. Even when they're teaching functional programming, the consistent emphasis on only x% effective really cuts out student interest. It's almost like saying, "yeah we have a method for preventing destructive assignment, but it doesn't really work." While it might seem like a good idea at first, I found it to quickly invoke the I'm not listening anymore response.
Next, is the issue of effectiveness. Personally, I've been shown way so many gross images of imperative spaghetti code, that I won't even open vim without knowing I have scala. Unfortunately, this doesn't follow through for a lot of other kids who went through the same education as I did. "I love ruby", "what about python", "it doesn't feel as good as C++", and "it's just too much work" are all (yes I know it's sad) frequently cited responses among people I know.
Thirdly, and most troublesome of all, some people don't care that they're spreading nasty interoperability impedance mismatching in their non-scalaz libraries since they haven't realized that variance annotations are not worth their use in the context of Scala’s partial support for Hindley Milner type-inferencing.
. I recently found out someone I knew was receiving treatment for coding in C. I asked her when she found out, believing this to be a recent development. "I've been coding in C all my life," she responds. I walked out of the room. She's quite active in the C community, and her disdain for scalaz is legendary. How anyone can exhibit that kind of carelessness is honestly, beyond me.
Rather than force Scalaz, I feel we might have to take a completely different approach. Scala is great, but it doesn't work when kids don't want to listen or don't care. Perhaps we need to stress the why here, rather than the how.Why fmap, contramap and xmap are (far) superior alternatives to annotated variances and covariances on map, for example.[2]
Lastly - I know this is really aside the point of this article, but Scala should probably also teach how to properly code using pure functional constructs. Not using Higher Kinded types in favor of Pimped Types, encoding algebraic structures of category theory, understanding type theory, (truly understanding, for real ) the benefits of static program verification, attempting a high (read: extremely high) degree of abstraction in the context of Scala’s limited laziness abilities, etc.
It's kind of sad that we learn all these things by exploration, again and again, generation after generation. I think it's about time we standardized it. Everyone needs to (well, almost everyone) use KleisliMA and FingerTrees one day, anyway. Lets just go one step further and relocate L3 programmers who don't understand (read:truly understand) applicative predictor monads, writer transformers lifted into a pointed functors and the Yoneda Lemma to a desert island in the Carribean and carpet bomb said island with B-32s until the last imperative mofo is subsumed by the dust. A Martin L3 is also known as Beginner Haskell Programmer. Might as well aim higher than Martin.
Comments
I recently (well, a few years ago) went through sex education in schools. They don't really teach you sex, as much as why you shouldn't have sex. Even when they're teaching contraception, the consistent emphasis on only x% effective really cuts out student interest. It's almost like saying, "yeah we have a method or preventing HIV transmission, but it doesn't really work." While it might seem like a good idea at first, I found it to quickly invoke the I'm not listening anymore response.
Next, is the issue of effectiveness. Personally, I've been shown way so many gross images of venereal diseases, that I I won't even touch without knowing I have protection. Unfortunately, this doesn't follow through for a lot of other kids who went through the same education as I did. "I was drunk", "we didn't have any", "it doesn't feel as good", and "it's too much work" are all (yes I know it's sad) frequently cited responses among people I know.
Thirdly, and most troublesome of all, some people don't care that they're spreading diseases. I recently found out someone I knew was receiving treatment for Hep B. I asked her when she found out, believing this to be a recent development. "I've had it all my life," she responds. I walked out of the room. She's quite active, and her disdain for condoms is legendary. How anyone can exhibit that kind of carelessness is honestly, beyond me.
Rather than force education, I feel we might have to take a completely different approach. Teaching is great, but it doesn't work when kids don't want to listen or don't care. Perhaps we need to stress the why here, rather than the how.
Lastly - I know this is really aside the point of this article, but schools should probably also teach how to have sex properly. Not using condoms, but common erogenous zones, sensing feedback, appropriate pressure, etc. It's kind of sad that we learn all these things by exploration, again and again, generation after generation. I think it's about time we standardized it. Everyone needs to (well, almost everyone) have sex one day, anyway. Might as well at least have fun.
Was she having sex with you? She might be disclosing it to her partners, just not every random guys she knows, understandably.
She actually did disclose it to the OP. So I don't see the problem. He just doesn't like the idea of people with Hep B having sex, I suspect. But as per the facts we have, it sounds to me like she's doing the right thing.
The reason I asked is because I've had knowingly had unprotected sex with a Heb B positive person. I had had a successful vaccination (meaning the antibodies were detectable in my blood) and consequently never got infected from him.
He disclosed this to me before we had sex. I told him "no big deal" because I had the antibodies. So just because the girl is having unprotected sex and hep B positive doesn't mean she's irresponsible, as long as her partners have had a successful vaccination.
(It is important to verify that your vaccination "took" however, before having sex with a hep B pos person.)
No, not me. I'm being a friend.
I wish it were this simple.
The school gives this guy a great amount of latitude and it's great that they do because he's truly knowledgeable, does a lot of research and helps his students a lot.
But, for every one of him, there are many others that, given the same latitude, will instead foist their pre-conceived ideas on students and insist that their view of sexual life, however either perverted or abnormally repressive it may be, is the way to go.
It's a hard problem with no easy solution because it involves a great many number of humans.
I really wish all sex-ed could be as great as this school has but I feel like a pessimist when I say that if that amount of latitude was given to every teacher that there would be a regular and constant amount of disasters created.
(Though I do agree that we can do way way better than our current sex-ed curriculum which is absolutely abysmal.. we need something that will at the very least address and provide some counter-points to the vast amounts of hardcore pornography now easily accessible.)
This particular instructor is an advocate for his standards, whether he intends to or not. He's gay, and according to the article approves of pretty much everyone being sexually active at 17 if they wish.
There are moral and emotional reasons to disagree with these, and I'm disappointed that the article doesn't highlight or speak approvingly of "waiting" or abstinence. To even suggest such things in this context makes one a pariah.
Yes, I agree abstinence-only education in public schools doesn't seem as effective as other curricular plans, particularly as it's usually not complemented by abstinence-only reinforcement at home. I'm pleased that he can discuss relationships, communication, and encourages students to think both long term and of those other than themselves. But all of that doesn't mean he's not advocating some moral stance.
I don't really see what specific stances he's taking in the article. The thing he seems to do and do well (from reading the article) is have open conversations about everything and let the kids have open dialogue in a controlled fashion.
He indicated that he may not have issues with 17 year olds having a healthy active sexual life but he wasn't preaching that they definitely should be.
Yes ... part of my point is our collective social morality is formed by whether (and which ones and how many) people agree with a particular philosophy. It's reflected in research on the stages of moral development (see, e.g., Kohlberg).
One can't help but advocate for things they believe in by the way they live their life. (As a corollary, trying to have independent journalists is an impossible ideal; compare NY Times and Washington Post.) Trying to suggest he's not advocating his view of morality is silly, just as someone suggesting I don't advocate for mine would be, even should I attempt to be even-handed.
But, for every one of him, there are many others that, given the same latitude, will instead foist their pre-conceived ideas on students and insist that their view of sexual life, however either perverted or abnormally repressive it may be, is the way to go.
Couldn't you replace "sexual life" with almost any other subject though? It's the same with all subjects that there are good and bad teachers and each one, the good and the bad, are going to influence their students.
Once we get into that discussion it's more about being able to find and retain the good teachers and being able to remove the inadequate one's which, I grant you, in the United States is definitely very hard to do.
I find myself somewhat agreeing with the general sentiment of your final paragraph. But "I think it's about time we standardized it" is really rubbing me the wrong way (honestly, not pun initially intended). Either you don't mean that how it sounds or you are massively underestimating the variety of sexual activities that humans engage in and enjoy.
Just with the examples you give (common erogenous zones, sensing feedback, appropriate pressure) there are massive differences between what one person might find enjoyable compared to another. Can you expand on what you would have in mind?
The fully generalizable things you can teach would be communication, consent, and respect. But really, a standardized curriculum for sex sounds kind of weird. People would think they're dirty perverts for coming up with something that isn't in the standardized curriculum.
> The fully generalizable things you can teach would be communication, consent, and respect.
Agreed. But this is rather a different kettle of fish to what it appears the grandparent comment was suggesting.
> People would think they're dirty perverts for coming up with something that isn't in the standardized curriculum.
Exactly my concern. There's enough of this going on already without unwittingly enshrining it in some form of sanctioned sex education curriculum.
I think it's less about pure education and more about a safe, controlled environment to have open and honest communication.
As you suggest it's a very complex subject with many questions having no generally applicable answers. However, being able to discuss such things between the sexes and with some mature guidance can remove a lot of humility and hopefully provide at least a little enlightenment.
That being said, I'm not entirely sure where this discussion should take place (i.e. is school the right place, I don't know).
Very much agreed. But I also think we're looking at the problem in a somewhat more isolated context than would be required to effect true improvement. By which I mean, if we are to achieve a safe, controlled environment to have open and honest communication about sex that includes some mature guidance, then a more systemic change in English speaking society as a whole is required. So rather than changes being effected at school, or at home, or somewhere else, I would suggest that change is needed at school and at home and in a wider sense across society.
Looking to existing attitudes and models in Europe might be a good starting point. Because what they do (especially the Scandinavians) works a hell of a lot better than what we do ("we" being English speaking people in general terms).
Do you have specific examples?
Here's a couple of articles on the Netherlands and Sweden:
http://www.medscape.com/viewarticle/408927_5 http://www.usnews.com/usnews/news/articles/070318/26sex.htm
The original link of this thread, which talks about the sex ed classes of a Mr Al Vernacchio, does strike me as a pretty detailed example of the kind of model that some European countries are practicing.
And I'll finish with another example from my own experience that illustrates the wider difference in attitude that I alluded to: I visited Germany about 6 or so years ago. One day we went to an area near Potsdam, I think it was Wannsee. This area has a lot of beautiful old architecture and park land and people can swim in some of these parks because they back onto a lake but this area is still very much a developed part of the Berlin/Potsdam area.
We went there with a small group of people, got lake-side and people started taking their clothes off to swim naked in the lake. This was a group of male and female people, almost none of which were in any kind of intimate relationship with each other. And in the middle of the day, with streets nearby and many people walking around the park and surrounding area. It wasn't specifically designated as a nude swimming area, it was just a swimming area and some people swam nude, some didn't and neither caused any issues for anyone.
This is one example that I noticed while in Europe but there were more of these situations where nudity or sex were treated in just a very mature and reasonable way. Not as something that should be shunned and feared out of some kind of puritan obsession with the subject; which in its self I think is fuelled by deeply unsatisfied sexual desires.
[deleted]
My partner of nearly 10 years is German and while I do feel that I've had a fairly long history of exposure to their culture through her, nor can I say that I am able to speak authoritatively on all Germans or all stratas of their culture. Certainly Germany and wider Europe are not made up of people who have an entirely homogenous attitude towards sexuality. And as you would of course know, it's not like you can just walk naked through any street in Berlin without causing a fuss. But having lived in Germany, I'm sure you understand the subtle difference in the European attitude that I'm trying to illustrate.
I think you're putting the horse before the cart. I'm pretty sceptical that anyone is 'fundamentally wired' any differently from anyone else. We're all products of our society and even if a certain set of social conventions are deeply baked into the history of a particular culture, that shouldn't mean that said social conventions should be mistaken for some form of innate attribute or that they cannot be re-examined if they are found to be detrimental. I'm not implying that this is necessarily what you meant, I'm just pointing out that its a slippery slope from 'fundamentally wired for X' to 'can't change X'.
Addressing your last point--I don't think that would really be all that effective. It's like teaching a driving course without getting in a car. The best you can really do is go over the basic safety rules.
I recently (well, a few years ago) went through functional programming in schools. They don't really teach you functional programming, as much as why you shouldn't program imperatively. Even when they're teaching functional programming, the consistent emphasis on only x% effective really cuts out student interest. It's almost like saying, "yeah we have a method for preventing destructive assignment, but it doesn't really work." While it might seem like a good idea at first, I found it to quickly invoke the I'm not listening anymore response. Next, is the issue of effectiveness. Personally, I've been shown way so many gross images of imperative spaghetti code, that I won't even open vim without knowing I have scala. Unfortunately, this doesn't follow through for a lot of other kids who went through the same education as I did. "I love ruby", "what about python", "it doesn't feel as good as C++", and "it's just too much work" are all (yes I know it's sad) frequently cited responses among people I know.
Thirdly, and most troublesome of all, some people don't care that they're spreading nasty interoperability impedance mismatching in their non-scalaz libraries since they haven't realized that variance annotations are not worth their use in the context of Scala’s partial support for Hindley Milner type-inferencing.
. I recently found out someone I knew was receiving treatment for coding in C. I asked her when she found out, believing this to be a recent development. "I've been coding in C all my life," she responds. I walked out of the room. She's quite active in the C community, and her disdain for scalaz is legendary. How anyone can exhibit that kind of carelessness is honestly, beyond me.
Rather than force Scalaz, I feel we might have to take a completely different approach. Scala is great, but it doesn't work when kids don't want to listen or don't care. Perhaps we need to stress the why here, rather than the how.Why fmap, contramap and xmap are (far) superior alternatives to annotated variances and covariances on map, for example.[2]
Lastly - I know this is really aside the point of this article, but Scala should probably also teach how to properly code using pure functional constructs. Not using Higher Kinded types in favor of Pimped Types, encoding algebraic structures of category theory, understanding type theory, (truly understanding, for real ) the benefits of static program verification, attempting a high (read: extremely high) degree of abstraction in the context of Scala’s limited laziness abilities, etc.
It's kind of sad that we learn all these things by exploration, again and again, generation after generation. I think it's about time we standardized it. Everyone needs to (well, almost everyone) use KleisliMA and FingerTrees one day, anyway. Lets just go one step further and relocate L3 programmers who don't understand (read:truly understand) applicative predictor monads, writer transformers lifted into a pointed functors and the Yoneda Lemma to a desert island in the Carribean and carpet bomb said island with B-32s until the last imperative mofo is subsumed by the dust. A Martin L3 is also known as Beginner Haskell Programmer. Might as well aim higher than Martin.
( Apologies etc. Dedicated to Tony Morris, my personal Haskell hero and Scala superhero 1. http://blog.tmorris.net/critique-of-oderskys-scala-levels/
2. http://scalaz.github.com/scalaz/scalaz-2.9.1-6.0.2/doc.sxr/s...)
3. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yoneda_lemma
> I think it's about time we standardized it.
Great, more teaching to the test....