Daily Page | Zebrality | NCAA Pool | General Chat | Latest Comments

You are on an individual archive page

Click here to return to the main page


Wikipedia does good things. Reward them.

The Daily Links Page
Got a link to submit?
  • Harry Reid: Dubya is 'worst president' for trying to save us from fiscal oblivion
  • Team Obama: Richardson misled us
  • Minnesota canvassing board expected to say that Democrat Al Franken is winner in Senate race
  • Obama Wants 600,000 More Bureaucrats
  • Senora Kennedy Is Make Very Good Senator
  • Holiday Sales Drop to Force Bankruptcies, Closings
  • Humorous Reminders of Common Writing Mistakes
  • Yellowstone Gets very Quakey
       [ 1 comment ]
  • Your 2009 Horoscope
  • Bush Sr. wants Jeb as president
  • Huffington Poster Rips Gore, Global Warming
  • Is living in a city bad for your brain?
  • Report: Patriots will use franchise tag on Matt Cassel
  • Thousands of shoes tie up Miami freeway traffic
  • Jones: Favre's play warranted benching
  • A Russian's take on how the US will split up by 2010
  • Group Wants 50% Hike in Gas Taxes
  • 6 reasons why no one is making catty comments about Caroline Kennedy's looks
  • Senate Dems May Physically Bar Burris From Entering Senate
  • EXCLUSIVE: RNC draft rips Bush's bailouts
  • Capitol offense: Building's in Madison, but skyline's in Minneapolis
  • Isn't 'Happy Holidays' a form of suicide bombing, too?
  • Dictator Stalin voted third-greatest Russian
  • Compilation of 2008's Top Movies Lists
  • The Seven Best Capers of 2008
  • Sheepshead
       [ 1 comment ]
  • 2008 Was the Beginning of the End for the Global Warming Hoax
  • Liberals start to feel the pain of liberalism
  • Man allegedly hides in bathroom, robs restaurant, spends loot at strip club
  • Bielema is in over his head and dragging the UW program into the ground.
  • Stray cat colony takes care of homeless baby
  • The Good News about the Bailouts
       [ 1 comment ]
  • Snowzilla Returns!
  • What If New York Goes Bust?
  • Great Moments in Local Government
  • Obama 'repressing inner geek'
  • Is Tammy Baldwin selling out the gay community?
  • Christmas Is Now An Official Holiday In...Iraq
  • Seattle refuses to use salt, resulting in 1800 miles of skating rink
       [ 2 comments ]
  • Why Obama Really Might Decriminalize Marijuana
  • Fourth Amendment Rights in Numbers Dialed Stored Inside a Cell Phone
  • Festivus for the rest of us
  • Companies That Won't Make It Through 2009
  • Franken Up By 48 Ballots With Most Counted
  • Good Argument for Tax Havens
  • CBS Seems To Think That Jamarcus Russell Is A Bald, White Kicker
  • Judge backs secrecy on Zimmermann 911 call
  • Beer goggles last longer for women
  • Congress Gives Itself a Raise In Midst of a Recession
  • Looks first, knowledge later

     

  • What's next in the schools?

       September 10, 2008

    One of the things that Sarah Palin has been accused of is wanting abstinence-only sex education taught in schools. She's said she's "I am opposed to explicit sex education." Because of her daughter's pregnancy, critics are quick to say "A ha!" and point to Bristol Palin's pregnancy as the natural consequence of a lack of sex education.

    Personally, if I had a daughter, I'd chop up birth control pills in her food as soon as she turned 13. But that's just me. Other parents feel differently, and that's the point. Parents should be responsible for this type of thing. Instead of asking what kind of sex education we should be teaching in schools, why aren't we asking why in the world we're teaching sex education in schools in the first place? Between parents, the Internet and the playground, I'm quite sure that curious children can learn plenty. Wouldn't the time spent on sex ed and the money spent on health class teachers be better spent teaching kids, oh, I don't know, reading, writing, math and science?

    Somehow, we've started to expect public schools to teach everything. Just yesterday, I was reading an article about how bike-friendly Wisconsin is. Naturally, the comments to the article quickly degenerated into a "bikes suck!" "cars suck!" argument (seriously - these must be the same people who constantly shouted "Ogg sucks!" out of their dorm rooms years ago). One commenter suggested:

    Better still would be to make it part of primary or secondary educational curriculum. It's a little strange when you think about it—most people receive no bicycle education at all, and many bicycle facilities are designed as an afterthought to roads—is it really such a mystery why bike riders don't behave predictably?

    I'm aghast at the kind of society that move on when people receive no bicycle education at all. The horror. Clearly we must remedy this with a required quarter-long class taught by some Bicycle Federation member for the low, low price of $35-$50K with state benefits. Whew! We all dodged a bullet there!

    Maybe sex education, driver's education, bicycle education and the like don't belong in schools at all. For years, Wisconsin's DNR has successfully managed a hunter education program. It doesn't take up valuable class time and parents don't have to subject their kids to it if they don't want to. Sounds good to me.


    Posted by kris at September 10, 2008 09:10 AM

        The trackback entry for this page is : http://www.inthehat.com/mt/mt-tb.cgi/1672

     

    Trackback Entries

     


    Comments

    #  September 12th, 2008 5:22 PM      Squibbly
    I agree that sex ed and some of those other extracurricular projects are best taught at home by loving parents who want to keep their kids safe, but its hard to ignore the fact that there are way too many parents that are abdicating their responsibilities to the schools. Do you think that having these programs actually decreases the number of parents who have meaningful discussions with their kids on these important topics? You know, the parent thinking "Gee I'm sure glad they talk about that stuff at school so that I don't have to."

    Personally I don't want the schools teaching my child something that I feel I could better teach, and that is MY responsibility to teach.  
     

     

     


    To leave a comment you must be logged in.
    Log in here
    or Get an Account here.