When sexual education classes in the Montgomery County public schools were outsourced to the Rockville Pregnancy Center, an "evangelical, antiabortion clinic," the education part of the class took a dramatic turn for the worse. Instead of actually learning about birth control or STD's, Rockville high schoolers played edifying games like the "gum game," where the students are forced to share the same piece of gum. They also play the "ex-lax game":
In this game, students were handed squares of Hershey's chocolate, but before they popped the candy, they were told that a few kids had instead received Ex-Lax laxatives. Still want to eat it? Few did, and, in fact, Tierney assures me that although this exercise "really freaks them out," it is only a mind game designed to drive home the idea of random risk -- no laxatives were distributed to students.
That's tax dollars well spent.
Comments (6)
Ah, the Montgomery County school system at work. I graduated high school from that county, which has some of the most wealthy communities in the whole nation. Even more impressive, many of your senators and congresspeople live with the county, as well as celebrities. But many send their kids to private schools. Hmm, I wonder why.
In 1990, I was part of a Kaiser Permanente initiative to teach kids about AIDS. We traveled in the DC area, giving a 'play' which seemed just like the kids themselves. The show was called "Secrets", and was widely known as a well-executed way to reach kids. (We even had a quality Q&A after the show, based on information from the CDC.) There was a segment where the two main characters, a teen couple in love, try to figure out whether to have sex.... In fact, a line in the show (I still remember 16 years later) was, "If we can't talk about sex together, we certainly aren't ready to do it".
Many schools, and one whole county (Fairfax VA), required the show to cut the section about condom use. Why, you may ask? Because, they said, 'to talk about condoms means that kids may be encouraged to have sex' : if you don't talk about it, maybe the kids won't do the act. (This rule was set by 50 year old people, btw, whose formative years were the early sixties).
There were many high schools where kids were already pregnant. Just recently I heard there are nurseries in many schools for the teen mothers.
The problem is lack of real education (lack of real teaching) and outdated ideas of 'older' decision-makers who don't know how to communicate with kids. Get real teachers, communicative sources, and reach the kids 'where they are' -- and not through evangelical methods in the public sector. It's truly possible: they just have to think of the "end user", not themselves.
Posted by: Lauren Muney | February 15, 2007 11:31 AM