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Parental Griping Successfully Waters Down Required Sex-Ed
By
Christopher Robbins
Published Oct 30, 2011
Modified Oct 30, 2011
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By
Christopher Robbins
Published Oct 30, 2011
Modified Oct 30, 2011
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Last week we learned that students in city schools would be taught about sexual intercourse and its implications as the DOE set one semester of required cirriculum for sixth or seventh graders and students in their first two years of high school. Thankfully, parents who prefer to keep their children ignorant of the crucial details surrounding humanity's most primal and consequential activities have prevailed: some of the course work has been cut. Specifically, the "risk cards" that were to be used by middle schoolers to explain different types of sex acts and their health implications. Thankfully, a dusty VHS copy of Showgirls is willing to fill in the gaps.
"We thought it was not age-appropriate for 11 and 12-year-olds," a DOE spokesperson told the Daily News. The programs will become mandatory in January, but last year 43% of high schools and 64% of middle schools used the state's reccommended course work, the HealthSmart and Reducing the Risk programs. "A significant percentage of our teenagers have had multiple sex partners, so we can't stick our heads in the sand about this," Chancellor Dennis Walcott said.
But a group called NYC Parents Choice is just fine with their clean, chaste, sandy neck thank you very much. They want to be able to offer their children an abstinence-only education that "leaves out explicit lessons entirely." And HealthSmart only mentions abstinence 90 times as opposed to condoms and other methods of birth control 230 times! Who can expect a teenager to understand how "birth control" works? Better to just tell them not to have sex, because if there's one thing we know about teenagers, it's that they always do what they're told. Especially when we say that it's in their best interests.
Tagged
biology
city schools
dennis walcott
DOE
facts
nature
parents choice
science
sex
sex ed
Christopher Robbins
Christopher Robbins is a New York City reporter covering transportation, affordable housing, local politics, and criminal justice. His work has also appeared in New York Magazine, The Village Voice and The New York Times. Chris is a graduate of Patrick Henry High School in Roanoke, Virginia, and enjoys biking to Fort Tilden in the summertime.
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