A Student Blogs About Sex-Ed Class

You know that every other kid in the world has a blog, right? Lots of them are at xanga.com, lots of LiveJournals, and lots at Blogspot and other free blog sites. Whether you know it or not, if you have a teenager, they probably have a web site somewhere.

The implication is the same for sex education as it is for news. The corporate media put out a certain kind of news story, and until a few years ago that was all you could get. But now there are alternatives, blogs from the extreme right and left ends of the political spectrum and everything in between. Some of them report news stories, some comment on them, most combine the two.

Same thing with kids in school. Every day, teenagers are writing on the Internet about their experiences. Your big-bucks organizations, whether they're NARAL or Family Research Council, may spend millions tailoring their message to make it palatable and persuasive, but Some Kid can type at a computer in study hall, writing about what they did in the class right before that, or what somebody said in the hall, or how ugly the teacher is, and it goes directly to the Internet and out to the world, right next to that high-dollar web site.

So every once in a while I like to check out what the kids are saying. Some of it is illuminating. Here's what Helen, age 17, says:

11 Jun 2005
One of the best ways to avoid AIDS is to "avoid homosexual behavior."

– from a federally funded program.
...

I was in one of those "abstinence-only" programs. The entire eighth grade was. I don't think anybody realized how fascist it was. We just knew that we had to pay attention and we got a week out of one period. Some broads came and told their stories. Basically all of them got knocked up and one had the kid at age 14, one had an abortion and regrets it, and whatever.

I really thank that program because that was the point I knew where I stood when it came to the whole society trying to dictate what one should or should not do to one's body. I guess you have to be a victim of the whole "robbing you of knowledge" agenda in order to be totally against it. They did not educate us about the consequences of premarital sex, they acted out a boring episode of Maury. They did not tell us to practice safe sex, they gave you candy for saying out loud, "I will wait for marriage to have sex."

Brah. Helen Rips

See, this isn't some seventeen-year-old celebrity or world-acclaimed genius. Looking around her blog, it looks like she watches TV a lot. Wears Levis. Seems to listen to rap music, hates the new shows on VH1.

But look what happens in sex-ed class. "Some broads come in" and no education takes place. Do you remember that feeling, that tunnel-vision experience when the classroom closes in around you, and you're sitting at your desk, and all you pray for is the passage of time? -- Should sex education class be like that? I mean, really, shouldn't that be the most interesting class of your whole high-school experience? Don't you have questions you want answers to? Don't you wonder how other people feel about it? Wouldn't you just die to understand how the whole thing really works?

I guess you have to be a victim of the whole "robbing you of knowledge" agenda in order to be totally against it. This high-school girl at seventeen clearly understands what the issue is. Some grown-ups are coming into the classroom to deprive students, not enrich them, to turn their minds off rather than on, to convey fear rather than knowledge, to numb rather than enliven -- and as a student she is perfectly aware of the "agenda" and perfectly willing to revolt against it.

And further, it's not just "knowledge," it's the whole society trying to dictate what one should or should not do to one's body. This is a very serious thing, when you realize that other people are making rules about how you will express yourself, who you will love, how you will love. At this point the educational system could present students with facts and information, and explanations about the consequences of various things, with the understanding that they'll decide for themselves how to run their own lives.

But some people don't want that, they think it's best if you don't tell kids anything.

I say, let's teach our Montgomery County kids the facts.