Last week the 5th graders at Lanier Elementary School went through Growth and Development. You remember in 5th grade where the boys went in one room and the girls in another and the school nurse came and showed a really out of touch video about puberty and then skirted around everyone's questions afterwards and provided no real useful information? Well guess what! It hasn't changed one bit!
The videos are now from the 90s. That's nice. They do cover the changes that children will go through and even use nude drawings of pre-pubescent boys/girls to show how changes will happen. I like that better than them not showing anything and just mentioning it because I think it reinforces the idea that your body is not something to be ashamed of and all girls have breasts and all boys have penises.
So here's where I get irritated. The boys video talked about puberty for boys. The girls video talked only about puberty for girls. The only mention of anything "sex" related was that they mentioned that when a male sperm cell combines with a female egg cell the egg becomes fertilized and can grow into a baby. One of the little girls picked up on it and raised her hand during question time to say "in the video it said when the cells combine they can grow into a baby. I don't understand that." The nurse's response was extremely angry sounding and she said "I am not going to answer that or talk to you about that. You can ask your mom but we are not going to talk about that here." The little girl looked really upset. This is bad because...
These kids are going to middle school next year. Middle school has changed. Kids are giving/receiving oral sex and some are even having sex already. I don't think it's fair to send these kids into that environment without explaining ANYTHING about HIV/AIDS, STDs, or how pregnancy can occur. I just wish we were a society that didn't freak out about sex and trusted our kids to have the information they need to make decisions and protect themselves. Studies show that children who are better informed about sex wait until later to have sex and have fewer sexual partners throughout their life yet we still hide all this information from them. It's just sad.
The videos are now from the 90s. That's nice. They do cover the changes that children will go through and even use nude drawings of pre-pubescent boys/girls to show how changes will happen. I like that better than them not showing anything and just mentioning it because I think it reinforces the idea that your body is not something to be ashamed of and all girls have breasts and all boys have penises.
So here's where I get irritated. The boys video talked about puberty for boys. The girls video talked only about puberty for girls. The only mention of anything "sex" related was that they mentioned that when a male sperm cell combines with a female egg cell the egg becomes fertilized and can grow into a baby. One of the little girls picked up on it and raised her hand during question time to say "in the video it said when the cells combine they can grow into a baby. I don't understand that." The nurse's response was extremely angry sounding and she said "I am not going to answer that or talk to you about that. You can ask your mom but we are not going to talk about that here." The little girl looked really upset. This is bad because...
These kids are going to middle school next year. Middle school has changed. Kids are giving/receiving oral sex and some are even having sex already. I don't think it's fair to send these kids into that environment without explaining ANYTHING about HIV/AIDS, STDs, or how pregnancy can occur. I just wish we were a society that didn't freak out about sex and trusted our kids to have the information they need to make decisions and protect themselves. Studies show that children who are better informed about sex wait until later to have sex and have fewer sexual partners throughout their life yet we still hide all this information from them. It's just sad.
I was in a group STAY. Students Teaching Aids to Youth. It was amazing. We talked to kids maybe as young as 4th grade all the way up to 12th. We were an "abstance" program that basically said "If you don't have any kind of sex you won't get sick or prego. But... if your going to have sex heres what you need to know" Teachers were usually shocked that highschool students would use the terms we did for discussion with other peers but they had such good questions because they had never had things like this addressed. It was great. The "No Sex" image that we had got us into a lot of schools and then we educated them the right way. I wish the program was avilable everywhere. Sorry for the spelling errors! LOL no spell check.
ReplyDeleteI think that schools are afraid of angry parents and that's why they don't approach the topic. Maybe it would be nice for schools to provide guides for talking to your kid about sex to parents so that those parents who want their kids to not attend a safer sex class can have a resource to do it themselves at least.
ReplyDeletestupid "not talking about sex" bullshit pisses me off as much as the highschool version i got which was "don't have sex". riiight. cause tons of people got pregnant by not having sex.
ReplyDeletei agree ellebelle. people gotta teach these kids all sides of the issues. peer pressure. abstinence. condoms. std's. aids. pregnancy. regrets. waiting. emotional ties. homosexuality. sexuality in general! it all needs to be taught! kids need the RIGHT answers so they can make INFORMED decisions.
alnfeo;ainf;oaina. yeah.