I have to disagree, Percy.

When you consider the potential harm that not knowing enough about sex can have on a person's life, whether that means an unplanned pregnancy, catching an STD, or sexual abuse, I think that hoping that parents will sit down and teach their kids about sexuality is asking too much.

The kind of expanded approach that Platt is advocating here would make our nation as a whole a healthier and safer place. I went to high school in Victoria, and I can recall the efforts made at sex ed were definitely inadequate. Being at school supposedly teaches us how to interact with other people, or socialises us. As Platt said, some of the relationships we build there and in life inevitably become intimate, and knowing more about sex, and not just the mechanics of that, but everything that goes with it, will surely help kids make better decisions, and improve their lives' quality in the process.

I think that if there is any money available for lifestyle instruction , the focus could come off sex, to a more practical instruction on how your income affects your lifestyle, and how you have to know how to balance your books, take care of the Hydro bill, and how much you want to spend being wired $50.00 to $200.00. Which equals either $600.00 or $2,400.00 after taxes.
Why are we not teaching more practical ideas ?

IAMC: As per usuual you missed the mark but, then again an individual such as yourself likely considers rubbing dollar bills against your skin as the ultimate form of sexual expression. However, for the so called "normies" out there it remains invaluable to understand that someone, (In a great number of cases it does not seem to be the parents who educate despite it being their responsibility to teach the children), must teach our kids. I'm all for teaching our children as they need good advice in the face of media attitudes towards sex and youth. Would you rather they learn from a professional or watch desperate houswives or The O.C.?

While it may be that parents are the best source for sex ed (and life ed) for their kids, the number of kids getting pregnant, or falling into drug use and other serious life problems, argues that many kids are NOT getting info they seriously need to have. School, which reaches (almost) all kids, is the next best alternative.
I think Platt's point is that if it's going to be done in schools, it should be done in a way that is going to be effective, no just pay lip service to the issue and move on. to "more important" stuff -- mainly, in this corporate-dominated world, job skills.

LOL. Yup, that'd be the IAMClueless I know from these threads.

My view: Sex is one of those basic life skills knowledge sets we can never learn enough of, or start early enough to acquire useful information on. And it is not just an individual "moral" issue which the repressed religious nutters would like to reduce it down to. It's a community wide issue that impacts on us all with such as all the single teen mothers on welfare kind of issues, and these weirdly sexually and often violently manifested males who have no real understanding of their own sexuality or how it appropriately intersects with that of females and the issues of reproduction.

It's no wonder there are so many sexual fukups running around. We've been listening to the likes of IAMC and the religious nutter set of all manifestations for too goddamn long already, who are so afraid that if we even crack open the closet door to let in the light of day, we'll all find out what they've been secretly up to.

Dirty, explosively repressed wee beggars that they be. Musn't talk about. Nobody say anything. Sneak, sneak, sneak. 8-D

Up with arming our kids with real knowledge of sexuality, its role and consequences, with a reality based morality component, as opposed to an "other worldly" religious based one. Down with the IAMClueless repressives and their every man, woman and child for themselves view of the world and morality..

I don't even know if parents are, in fact, the best source of information about sexuality for their kids. Assuming that's been the model of reliance to here. The evidence certainly suggests otherwise. (For most kids known to me, parents are really the last source for information they typically seek out. Too close. Too many other impeding issues.)

Like I say, there is of course that preference I suppose, if it works, which I suspect is seldom-, from the concrete evidence. Really, given the nature of its manifest extended impacts, I think this aspect of child and morality rearing needs to have, at least, a siginificant community interest and role as part of it as well, for which there need be no apology.

Great article!

The description of kids being marched en masse into a gymnasium to watch a film on the subject brought back memories I thought I'd suppressed! It's so easy to forget what it was like to be young and not know.

The introduction of sex education into the public school system was a great achievement, and did a world of good for kids who might not otherwise be positioned to absorb the information from popular culture. Just to illustrate what I mean (and not to pick on any group), I distinctly remember a very sheltered girl who came from a family of Jehovah's Witnesses. The sex education provided her with potentially catosphrophe-preventing information she might never have encountered otherwise. We can't assume that everyone is attuned to pop culture messaging (which has now integrated a version of "sex ed" into its programming) or that they will have informed peers in their immediate milieu to turn to. I think it is even more important today, with the influx of children from less "liberated" (hate the term) lands. If done properly, sex education can do a world of good for all those veiled and scarved girls in the public system now. It's a generational project whose fruits won't be seen for another ten or fifteen years, but an essential one for the integration of our society.

And as for the boys....Don't get me started! Much of the social problems we're now having with that demographic is partly attributable to the lack of masculine guidance given boys, and the lack of "initiatory" forms that help boys & young men integrate their sexuality into a broader framework of healthy relationships and a constructive and participatory social outlook (as opposed to an essentially anti-social sexuality). Again, not to pick on any particular group, but this dysfunction is particularly evident among the adolescent males of some minority groups. Think of your garden variety teenaged gangstah-wannabe in the east indian or black community and you'll get the picture.

How we "do" sex ed is key, as the author here states. Maybe the term "sex education" is a little too narrow - because we're talking about a number of things. There's the mechanics and safety-practices, but there's also the integration of sexuality into a healthy means of relating with the people in our world and society at large.

Interesting point, Percy, about the need to get smart about the messaging. Sex ed is NOT about perpetuating the disasterous "sexual revolution" and its reductionist approach to sex. Some conservatives go a little far in their backlash to this, but some of their critique of some aspects of the messaging is valid. Policy makers and those devising the curriculum need to be smart and sensible, and perhaps even a little clever in terms of getting the needed messaging out there without arousing particular sensibilities. One thing sex ed should not be used for is as a platform for ideologues to work out misguided social engineering theories.

That's why this article is timely, and its a very worthy subject for further discussion & debate.

What parents want more is sex prevention taught in schools. Puberty and sexual awareness begins around about 11-13, thanks is great part to our high-fat diet
http://www.malattiemetaboliche.it/news/cells_linked.htm
It wasn't so long ago that puberty and sexual curiousity began at 16-17, when our children were also considered adults, got married, had children of their own, went off to make a living. But we have managed to make the worst of this scenario by bringing on sexual desire much earlier, and by keeping our kids at home with "nothing to do", except be enetertained. And this has been going on for at least the last three generations.

Naturally, parents today are in a quandry, considering that what they are trying to prevent in their children, is what their parents tried to prevent in them, and it has come to be "the norm". So far, articles like this reveal that we are "fighting" a holding action, because we don't know what else to do. We offer up (at best) bandaid solutions, such as abstenence and fear, both of which repress natural curiosity, and, in increasing numbers, merely shuffle natural urges into other areas (street racing anyone?) There is no use eppealing to the reasoning of teenagers, nor any form of "logic". "Just Do It" is far more than a bumper sticker........

Whatever we devise as a real solution is going to having to deal with the two simple facts -- that early onset puberty is here, and idleness is here. And both will be here for the foreseeable future.

Informed sex education in school is a great way to prevent the propagation of ignorance and prejudice from one generation to the next. Adults are generally uncomfortable with their children's sexual maturity because it means they have grown up, childhood is over.

If that is so, then we are failing to follow up by offering them adult things to participate in...........

Couple of things.

First, any suggestion of sex is very dangerous in any institutional setting. Many of your colleagues are bound to be repressed and uneducated on the subject and just waiting for a chance to make an accusation. They weren't taught this stuff either. In their minds it's fraught with nasty associations. Plus they don't like you at all since you got that promotion that really should, don't ya know, have been theirs.

We are not quite through a period in our schools where teachers are forbidden any physical contact with students. Why was that again?

That accusation, false or not, is enough all by itself to destroy a career, even a life. And many do turn out to be false.

Then, the whole subject seems misnamed. You don't want to teach anybody how to have sex. They tend to figure that out through practice together. What you want them to know is just related to that:

Name 5 methods of birth control, and the advantages and disadvantages of each.

Name the dozen most common STDs and list the routes of transmission of each.

List three ways to make oneself safe from each?

How does one recognize and deal with a bully?

What is the nature of a predator and how do they hunt?

And for extra credit, how much does it cost to raise a baby? (You're welcome, IAMC)

Bailey:
That would mean pulling our collective head out of the sand, and recognizing that sex does exist!

Would we EVER allow teachers to teach children some practical applications, such as this:
http://www.orgonelab.org/contracep.htm
http://www.sisterzeus.com/Abortif.htm

Bailey where are the answers in the back of the book? Are you going to "E" mail them out to us?

Dear RickW; No

Dear woody; No

Thanks for your article, Karen.

BTW, if people haven't checked out 'Parenting Teens' magazine (Karen Platt is editor) I highly recommend it. You can DL a copy of the most recent issue, Spring 2006, from islandparent.ca/ My question for Karen and others is, exactly where can I find reliable I-net info on, say, the issues that Bailey raises. BTW, I scoured 'Parenting Teens' mag, and the article "The Subject is Sex", and all I was referred to were a couple of surveys. I don't want survey results, I would like an in-depth FAQ at the least to go over with my wife and daughter. ASAP! Gracias.

I'm not that long out of the public school system, and I don't recall a lack of sex-ed. In fact, sexually relevant subjects began in first grade — body parts, good and bad touching — and continued until grade 10. I guess that's changed.

No it hasn't changed, adamw. I don't know how sex ed. is addressed at other schools but here's what happens in my elementary school ...

Kindergarten - Gr. 3: CARE kit is taught to students. This is a sexual abuse prevention program. Body parts, etc. are discussed.

Gr. 4 students are given a series of talks by our School Counsellor.

Gr. 5 boys and girls are given a "talk" by the Public Health Nurse (genders are separated).

Gr. 6 boys and girls get a talk too. I can't remember if they were separated or not, I think they were.

Gr. 7 boys and girls: Public Health Nurse comes in for a series of talks. The boys and girls stay together.

By grades 6 and 7, the kids think they know enough and are uncomfortable enough about sex that their behaviour is rather silly during the talks. I have no idea how effective the talks are. I remember discussing them with my daughter when she was in Gr. 7 but she said "It was all stuff you've told me anyway!"

I don't know what's done in secondary schools.

This is obviously not enough though. If it was there wouldn't be 5 pregnant girls in our high school of 400 students!! And let's not even count the number of kids with STDs!! It is one thing to sit in a class and listen to someone talk about sex where you're surrounded by your buddies and "have" to act "cool". It is a far more valuable educational experience if children and teens can talk with someone they feel more comfortable with (like a parent or other trusted adult). But that obviously doesn't happen too often in some houses. Easy to tell when one parent came into the high school to blame the teachers for his daughter's pregnancy because they didn't teach her enough!!!

I'd suspect the problems are the result of instituational and youth culture as a opposed to education. And some shitty parenting — but let's face it, the parents often take a back seat to peers when comes to social development.

I think the many problems stems from the fact that so-called teenagers are a patronized, ignored, and treated as a less than capable adults. They're simply exercising control; and the tiny world of teenage control consists of one's own body, and whatever money mom and dad give you.

Hope the discussion in schools includes not only information about the physicality of sex but also about the strong emotional interplay at the heart of this territory as well.

I remember it as a pretty intense time...for both guys and gals...first love, first sexual experience...profoundly powerful in its own way.

Excellent point, lynn. "Sex Ed" is a pretty narrow term for the whole package that needs to be covered. After the basic messaging regarding safety, prevention, and (self) respect, there's a lot of second-tier issues that need to be tackled....related to identity, culture, value systems...

I think the challenge of "sex ed" lies not in making the programme "cool enough" so the young will listen. Those attempts always fail, and are usually either patronizing or totally lame.

The real challenge lies in the educators and curriculum-planners themselves getting innovative enough and far enough ahead in their thinking that they can anticipate the new challenges that kids today will be facing. I believe it's actually far more difficult today than in previous generations for young people to form intact adult identities during the compacted years of adolescence. There's so much there now that was never there before. That's why de facto adolescence often extends into the 30's now. You can see this everywhere. In this prolonged adolescent state, we're increasingly susceptible to notions embedded in media, entertainment and marketing regarding who and what we're supposed to be.

So "sex ed" has an awsome bill to fill - it has to provide the basics in a non-ideological manner (this cuts both ways) while going the extra mile to help reinforce a sense of self in (post-)modern society that is self-reserving, self-preserving and self-accepting in an ambient cultural and media space whose ultimate aim is to make the individual feel worthless until they "put out" one way or another through their wallets or through their bodies.

...all of which requires a ceertain reasoning that is easily overridden by "curiosity". We are asking essentially for abstainence, and "look before you leap", when all the time the estrogen and testosterone is just a pumpin'.

I will go back to my original statement that our high fat society has moved the age of puberty down, so that children have become adults, in the pysical sense. At the same time, our increasingly high tech society has taken away those dozen years after the onset of puberty, where these physical adults can learn to become adults psychologically.

So what DO the posters (all of whom are given to thoughtful conjecture BTW) here, mean by "treating them as adults"? How do we do that, not only in a society that has created a virtual void in these years, but in such a way that it is not patently "make work"?

Rick - It's an interesting point. But one could argue that the reverse is actually true. The ancient Hebrew tribal tradition establishes that women reach adulthood at 12 and men at 13. We know from other sources that puberty and marriage in European cultures also often coincided with those ages. Romeo's Juliette could reasonably (and legally) have been an 11 year old girl (!) and Romeo scarcely any older.

As for treating children like adults, I personally distrust efforts by adults to become their charges' "best friends". Children are not our siblings, and it scambles the signals in a harmful way when children sense that the adults whom they're looking to for leadership and guidance actually seem to be seeking their approval and acceptance. There is a necessary contingent (temporary) hierarchy there, the weakening of which may be part of the problem.

Re. the early puberty thesis...a far better case is made vis a vis girls by referencing the saturation of the food system with estrogens (dairy and poultry) as well as detergents and plastics which are ingested and interpreted by the body's chemistry as estrogen variants (i.e. the principal female hormone). It has caused a few flukes (isolated cases of girls as young as 4 beginning their menses) but I don't know if any widespread conclusions have been drawn by scientists. Some have argued that saturation of the food system with estrogen-markers also accounts for the gradual increase of congenital malformations of the genitals among baby boys over the past few decades (this is a digression, but its actually true - nightbloom's seen a lot of penises in his day....and don't even get me started on overzealous or outright botched circumcisions!).

So early sexual activity among early teens could simply be a reversion to pre-modern practices. I definitely agree with the whole delayed adulthood thesis though. That's definitely a post-war phenomenon, starting with the Baby Boomers, the original "ME Generation".

Could have been an extended period of "good times". Then, they had food -- today we have both food and plastics.

Regarding treating early puberty children as adults, about the only significant way I know of to do that is to become independent (get a job, raise a family, all that) How else does one "treat someone like an adult"? And our post There is little or no provision in post WWII society for that - and this trend is accelerating.

If there is a solution, it must necesarily involve recognising that 12 year olds are sexual creatures............

Yeah, I suppose "adult" is too poorly-defined a concept to bandy around when discussing how best to treat youth. I agree with nightbloom: while the concept "friend" remains valid, the idea that an adult can play peer with an teen or pre-teen is silly. Still, establishing an individual identity — in a society obsessed with individualism — remains frustrating for those under 18. And on that point, I see the lack of outlets for positive individual growth as a greater source of immature sexual expression than, say, a lack of sex ed. Most students knew about sex, STD's, and pregnancy by grade 7 — and I don't think the ones having tons of promiscuous sex are doing so because they're ignorant (except JW kids, whose early pregnancies make them sex-ed martyrs who bring reality to junior high schoolers); they're having promiscuous sex because they're having an immature response to an mature situation.

Although we DO have this persistent "puritan" streak running behind the whole subject......

Who gets pregnant in high school?

Largely, poor white, and aboriginal kids. Why those groups?

Does education really help to prevent pregnancy, when the pregnant girls feel important and loved, perhaps for the first time in their lives? My partner sees teenage pregnancy happening over and over again in his inner city school. The girls feel, ever so briefly, empowered and important. How do you argue against those feelings?

most teachers don't have a clue what's really going on anyway. they're too busy playing socialist politician.

marta - you've made a very powerful & relevant point. There's so much more going on that meets the eye, isn't there.

I've always suspected similar "subliminal" motivations affecting the incidence of unprotected sex in other constituencies as well (i.e. gay men). Acting out on such behaviour immediately places them at the centre of a huge and very intense "attention-giving mechanism" within the healthcare sector.

It's a largely unexamined factor in all the sex ed and "safe sex" research and messaging.

Well said, Marta. My observations confirm your friend's findings.

Our local health officials report that the teen pregnancy rate has remained fairly constant over the past few decades, although teen births have plummeted due to abortion access.

Education clearly does not work for all.

This is somewhat akin to drunk driving stats: there remains a group of people who cannot be reached, despite our collective efforts to educate them.

wow, sex sure does get a message board going. just thought this was interesting. this afternoon im going into a local highschool where a few of the students have been working to build a board game titled: "The Always Wear a Rubber Game". If you land on a chance card and get a "disease" you get a handy little card with a horrible picture of warts, etc and have to win trivia questions to get rid of the sti cards to win the game! super fun! lets see if student led sexual education is the way to go? xoxo.

Obviously. Teachers see schools as a source of single mothers and their spawn, porch monkeys — non-workers who steal money from hard working capitalists with bleeding heart voodoo. (Not that the liberal media is going to report this.) I'm surprise you didn't catch on earlier.

Well said, and I think the unfortunate reality is that there's a danger in allowing this sub-group to determine messaging strategies. At some point there has to be a "triage" process in order to keep education messaging universally effective, while passing this sub-group from the education sector to the social services and healthcare sector.

Spawn? Porch monkeys? Sub-group?

Who are you people, anyway? You talk like people without any families.

Marta:

You don't! Rather, you work WITH these feelings, because they are entirely natural. But we try to quash them. That way is as hopeless as the so-called War on Drugs.

Elliot, you're an idiot!

Hey, I just type what the Fraser Institute tells me to.

To be serious, I think the drunk driving analogy is good one; no matter how much education there is, some people are still going to drink and drive. And like with anything else, it's good to bear in mind that it's usually 20% of the people doing 80% of deeds — the contemprary sex trouble, however, differs from, say, D & D, insofar as there seems to be a desirable social status attached to promiscuity.

thanks rick. coming from a bona-fide lefty like yourself i'll take that as a compliment. i guess the truth hurts eh?

Look at youth today. With boxes of condoms in a girl's purse and boy's pockets they end up having unprotected sex, because they only remember that condoms are to be put on two fingers in a classroom! Human brain is not very good at associating cause with effect until the age of about 25. Staying up late and difficulties in getting up in the morning are the best example. Some proven facts are hidden by sex educators, like vaginal intercourse without condom is about 10,000 times safer (as far as transmission of AIDS is concerned) than anal with condom. The only solution seems to be take those youngsters (over 18 at least) to the orgy and give the visual (at least) instruction. Orgies between consulting adults have been legalized by the Supreme Court of Canada on December 20th 2005. Any volunteers to take part in a hands on demonstration?

Moving beyond Elliot's totally inappropriate and stupid generalization, I wish everyone could have seen one of my student teachers (I supervise student teachers in their professional preparation year through one of our local universities) working with sex education in a class of grade 8 students. She framed the entire exercise, over several weeks, within the context of responsible decision making around relationship choices. The unit was a very effective one, combining the attention to context that Karen is calling for in the original article here with some important life skills for young people.

I'm studying the human papilloma viruses and their relationship to cervical cancer.

Anybody have an opinion about the new Merck and Glaxo vaccines for hpv that will probably become mandatory for eleven and twelve year old girls in the US and Canada?

I'll bet they won't become mandatory in the U.S. It will become a church vs. state issue. The religious right will say the vaccine will tacitly promote intercourse by making it safer.

Wow - unless cervical cancer climbs up the list of "top killers of women", and unless they can demonstrate that HPV is a leading cause of cervical cancer (and not merely a statistically dubious co-factor), and unless they can demonstrate that this new vaccine isn't another pharmaceutical industry screw-up with the potential to affect millions of girls.....then here's to the "religious right" for standing up to them when every other component of society has gone ass-up to Big Pharmacy.

The idea of the government instantaneously mandating compulsory vaccinations of an experimental nature on the child-bearing human population is frightening.

I'm very dubious of statistics and the uses that are made of them. There's a lobby emerging now that wants to institute compulsory circumcision of boys right across the continent of Africa because some policy-wonk produced statistics showing a slight correlation between uncut men and hiv+ status. The number of semantic shortcuts and leaps of logic you have to make to justify such a policy out of such scant numbers is just fantastical.

Statistics have become a spoils system for grant-funded agencies both domestically and internationally. And they target a credible public which then generates pressure on policy-makers, creating an artificial political imperative to act. That's why it's so important to have an informed and (constructively) skeptical electorate.

Marta, what an interesting and poignant observation about who gets pregnant.

There seem to be two main approaches to telling kids about sex, neither of which would be effective in preventing pregnancy if the key to sex is trade it for a temporary sense of love and affection:

1. Stigmatizing sex -- it's dirty, only dirty people do it without church sanction, it's inappropriate to even discuss it.

2. Rational forethought of consequences -- pregnancy and parenting are incredible responsibilities with massive and difficult lifestyle changes and commitments.

Stigmatizing doesn't work, because if your friends and family are single teen moms then it's totally normal.

Rational forethought only works with rational people, who are quite evidently scarce if 9/10ths of us purport to believe in miracles and angels.

Perhaps the schools should be trying to teach logic and reason, as well as memorization and sports.

...that should have been credulous public rather that "credible" public...

Marta's point about who gets pregnant is a good one when it applies to many communities but not like a town like mine. The earnings per capita is quite high. Pulp mill workers make a lot of money but their kids are still getting pregnant. One of my daughter's friends got pregnant at 13. She was from a dual income, blended family. The girl was, in my opinion, still looking for love but it was to replace the love of her absentee biological father. I realize that not all girls of blended/divorced families don't get pregnant in high school (my step-daughter is one of those, thank goodness!!) but maybe divorce (and all the issues related to it) that should be considered along with socio-economic status?

And ... we can teach any life skill we want at school but if it isn't followed up at home the transference of skills falls dramatically. Flame me if you like, but the school system can only do so much. We are supposed to find time in the day to teach the 3 Rs too, after all ;-) More parents have to take some responsibility too!!!

Rational forethought of the consequences of unprotected sex doesn't happen at 13...that's a 20-something thing for most of the population (and apparently a fifty-something thing for gay men, judging from current statistics).

Arguments against stigma - the most potent, nasty, and effective weapon of mass precaution - should deal with the truth of the matter: (1) its against our value-system and (2) it hampers outreach efforts to those falling or already fallen through the cracks. As a result, we accept a certain level of "normalization" of the undesired behaviour (or more specifically its outcomes) as a corrective to the undesired results of stigma.

I've always admired CBC journalist Anne Petrie for coming forward with her story as an unwed teen mother. I personally abhore the thought of stigmatizing pregnant girls, even while I recoil from the vulgar nastiness of some of the underaged moms I see semi-regularly in shopping centres. There are definite class issues at work here, as well.

But stigma has its uses in other applications, so I'm reluctant to dismiss it as a tool simply because it hurts feelings. I think a hard-hitting poster campaign in the gay community (in the bars, bathhouses, and circuit parties) depicting the facial and bodily grotesqueries resulting from prolonged anti-viral therapy is just the wake up call that is needed. There's such thing going so far with de-stigmatization that you actually create new norms, new in-groups centred around the undesireable behaviour-&-outcome, at the expense of the more sane members of a given demographic. In this particular instance, that unfortunate turning point was reached long, long ago and never corrected.

So whatdyou guys think about Merck's and Glaxo's big new hpv vaccines. (Merck's is called "Gardasil"--catchy, eh. Human papilloma virus, that is. Apparently these guys have just about got their new viral particle injections up and running so they're doing propaganda on governments to get universal vaccinatioins for 9-12 year old girls against a virus that admittedly does no harm to 98% of the people that it "infects."

They've now, by statistical correlation, figured out that human papilloma virus "causes" cervical cancer in women, although 80 percent of woman get it (hpv) by the time they've reached 50 anyway.

Cervical cancer has become pretty well controlled in the rich countries, with the Pap smear as the screening device of choice.

You see cervical cancer almost always displays a warning by way of dysplasia--precancerous changes in cervical tissue--which can be treated with conventional methods--surgery, rads and chemo--and is apparently almost always successful.

Of course, the pharmacorp claim that they're altruistically tinkled pink because now they can block hpv in the poorer nations in spite of the fact that these new vaccines will cost between 300 and 500 bucks a pop, and could just possibly be prohibitive in places where the per capita income is about 100 to 500 bucks per year.

Oh yeah, the new vaccines will only block 70% of the hpvs that "cause" cervical can--types 16 and 18, and some of them also types 6 and 11 which cause genital warts and other genital cancers. (apparently)

Looks like they're finally doing with hpv what they spent billions on--and failed--regarding hiv.

In spite of this being a sexually transmitted infection, there's no test yet for boys.

Weird, how the big Pharmas usually ignore rare diseases, eh--no money in them.

The whole thing seems to be peculiarly fast-tracked, too, because the real information about efficacy against even dysplasia (let alone actual cervical cancer) will take at least another 20 years to assess.

All comments above are very interesting.

Quite frankly I believe there is an embarrassment to the student in openly teaching sex with a teacher - and definitely a parent.

What about giving them a book to read that covers all aspects of sex including safety? They can read it privately and then be required to write an essay on what they have learned. Call me stupid or old fashioned but I think it would work.

Jack,

I think you would be very surprised at what students tell their teachers. I know that I have been told some things by students that would make parents cringe if they knew I knew lol. But I do think the level of confidence shared between student and teacher definitely depends on the teacher and his/her attitude towards the students.

I am a Special Needs teacher and I've had girls in Gr. 7 asking me questions about sex while I'm on playground duty and/or coaching. When I was a classroom teacher and teaching the CARE program (sexual abuse prevention), students didn't seem afraid to talk during discussions and/or privately with me.

Students in elementary school might do the book and essay thing but I highly doubt high school students would do it without there being grades attached. There is also the consideration the teacher would have to make on the different academic level (reading level, ability to understand the concepts/materials, etc.) of the students. Unless the parents bought into the assignment and provided follow-up at home, I don't think a homework assignment would work for a lot of students (most of whom would be the ones who need it the most).

education? did anyone hear jinny sims on the radio this morning? even teachers were phoning in to ask what the hell she was talking about. what a terrible representative for a group of professionals. oh, wait, i forgot, they're trade unionists now, aren't they?

Spedteacher...

There's a couple of generation gaps between when I went to school and today's kids. I must admit that I'm surprised that the kids are so open about it but stand corrected.
When I was a teenager one of my parents handed me a book called 'Sex, Married Life and Birth Control' and that was the extent of my formal sex education.
AIDS has made sex today more prohibitive but the no-pill generation had its worries too.

Elliot - I agree with you about Jinny Sims.