Editor's note: I met Kaden a few years ago in a writer's forum, and he blew me away. It's rare for an adult to actually meet a teenager who can think rings around the smartest people you know. So we became fast friends, and I've almost given up arguing with him because he's too frequently right. It's with great pleasure, then, that I extract the post he so cleverly tried to hide in the comments and emblazon it across the face of En Tequila Es Verdad for all the world to see.
I'm reasonably sure he was joking about being our Senior Teen Correspondent, but I'm making it official. At least until I have to give way to Chronos and appoint him as our Senior Young Adult Correspondent.
Without further ado, then, I present you Kaden's report on abstinence-only education and the general fuckwittery thereof.
Being something of the Senior Teen Correspondent, I thought I'd shed my view on things.
SOME parents - I repeat, some - know what teens are doing these days. Some of _those_ parents know how to address those topics and have a mature, constructive discussion; but its only a small percentage of that smaller group of parents who also can summon up the courage to initiate that kind of discussion with their teen.
Other parents are about as clueless as a color-blind bomb defusal team. Abstinence-only education has NEVER worked. Of course, even in-depth sexual education won't stop a hormonal teenager from doing what they really want to be doing, but at least they have an idea of what could happen.
Clearly, though, the combination of sex ed, increased parent/child discussions, media coverage and a general increase in public knowledge, has had positive effects. Teen pregnancy rates across the U.S. have declined since about the 90s. Though, unfortunately, some statistics say that its started to level out and climb back up again in recent years.
In any case, the question at hand. Should abstinence-only education be taught in schools? No, and for a few reasons.
One, the saturation of media in our culture makes that level of sheltering nigh impossible, and even dangerous if it were actually achieved. Things like YouTube, the limitless number of pornographic websites, late-night HBO, and just about any music video with the images or words: bling, pimp, ho, playa/er, gangsta/er, rap.. well, you get the idea. It all educates us youngin's, in the wrong ways, if we were never educated any other way.
Two, on a more positive note, the culture has started to shift its paradigm as well. Condom commercials, which are frequent in most European locales, are finally starting to make their way into our networks. The younger age brackets right now are starting to learn things that we, as parents, will be able to more effectively teach our kids than our abstinence-fed parents were, by and large, not able to do for us.
Three, if you learn only one thing about us, its that the more obviously you try to hide the christmas presents, the more we'll start snooping around in closets.
Four, sex ed does actually help. I go to a high school five days a week. I see it every day. Between rock stars, sex idols, playboy and, of course, the internet, we are one horny bunch of people. However, programs like Planned Parenthood, where we can get free, confidential contraceptives, means that its all fun and no kids. At least, more often than before.
So look, the evidence that sexual education is a positive, if not wholly effective method, is irrefutable. To try to deny that is just..
Wait, who are we arguing with?
Republicans? Oh..
Fuck.
-Kaden, Senior Teen Correspondent, En Tequila Es Verdad
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1 comment:
Win.
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