From: lfoard@Turing.ORG (Lawrence C. Foard)
Subject: Re: Passing out Condoms  (Was Re: Better Off Than Four Years Ago NOT)
Organization: The Turing Project, Charlottesville Virginia.
Date: Mon, 7 Sep 1992 02:50:32 GMT

In article <1992Sep5.110014.2871@anasazi.com> karl@anasazi.com (Karl Dussik) writes:
>In article <1992Aug26.051213.865@murdoch.acc.Virginia.EDU> lfoard@Turing.ORG (Lawrence C. Foard) writes:
>>In article <1992Aug26.024744.6464@pasteur.Berkeley.EDU> c60a-zg@volga.Berkeley.EDU (Martin Guerrero-LabA) writes:
>>>
>>>  Why is the school, esp. Public schools the one doing the sex ed, and not
>>>the family where the primary education should be.   
>
>[ stuff deleteed ]
>
>>Why don't I ever hear this argument used against drivers ed? After all
>>if we didn't teach our kids to drive they wouldn't have accident.... RIGHT..
>>
>
>Children are physically capable of driving a car at age 10 or less.
>What do you think would happen if we were to start teaching driver's ed at
>age 10 and left the keys to the family car easily accessible?

Unless your children wear chastity belts these situations are not anagous.
Your kids don't need keys to have sex. If your worried about your 10 year
old stealing the keys and driving your car, should you take out the safety
belts to discourage them?

>>That simply hasn't worked, I think there are something like 1 million
>>teen pregnancies a year. "Family values" hasn't stopped kids from having
>>sex, but education can atleast give them the knowledge to do it safely.
>>
>
>Sure - and the massive introduction of valueless technical sex education
>has been a great success.  In fact, the more sex education we've had in the
>schools, the worse the problems of teenage sex have gotten.

Do you have evidence that the problem has gotten worse? There are more
unmarried teenagers pregnant not because more teenagers get pregnant but
because they now often try to finish school rather than having a shot
gun wedding.

>"Family values" hasn't worked for two main reasons.  1) The public - i.e.,
>government run - schools have been systematically waging war against family
>values.  

For example?

>This is one of the two major reasons for parents pulling their
>children out of public schools and putting them into private and religious
>schools.  Parents even send their kids to schools of a different religion
>from their own - e.g.: black Southern Baptists sending their kids to Catholic
>schools.  And the kids thrive there, not only because the schools are better
>academically, but because those schools are much better morally than the
>public schools.

How are they "morally better", and why do you think the school has more
influence than parents, peers and TV?

>And 2) the "media elite", mainly through television and the movies, have -
>not coincidentally - been waging the exact same war against "family values".
>And they have been winning big time to the severe detriment of society as a
>whole.

I will agree partially here, TV does tend to glamorize violence. Ironically
it ok to show one man brutally killing another on TV and no one complains,
show two men in bed and the "family values" people will have a cow.

>How can a family sustain its values when they are continually undermined
>everywhere they turn?

It depends what the values are, some values like "keep blacks in there
place", "beat up anyone you think is gay" are not values that should be
sustained. 
Rather than blindly fighting change realize that there is both change
for the better and worse happening. 
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