Wisconsin on Sex Education

Wisconsin on Sex Ed
inspired this blog entry.

There was a time (granted gone for a while
now) that young girls were not only having
sex, they were having babies, and that was
"normal."

One has to wonder if it "worked," or if it
was just what was. How did it get to be
that age 18 was appropriate? Who decided
that, and why? If anyone knows the history
of this, I would be curious to know.

I bring this up because how we define our
culture is how our culture interacts with
us. I would suggest that the mental
attitudes of adults everywhere are affecting
how the children of today become the adults
(ready or not) of tomorrow.

Just because we want to "ignore" something,
doesn't mean that it doesn't exist. To
raise the topic (and or the conversation)
does perhaps make it more available to those
it is raised to. However, how many kids out
of curiosity already do the types of things
that adults might fear/have concerns about?

Wouldn't guided curiosity be better than
unguided? I realize it is a loaded
conversation, like many societal conversations
are, but perhaps we should consider
interacting with things as they are, and not
as we judge them to be. If adults would
refrain from using their judgments of things
as a way to attempt to control them, then
children may be more likely to take things
in stride, and without a charge that
some might feel inappropriate.

There is a place for judgment. It can show
one the consequences of one's actions prior
to taking an action. To use it as a means
of dissuading an action I would suspect is
not very powerful and even, at times, quite
ineffective.

Complex topic. Hard to cover in just a few
words. As with anything, I think conversation
and communication are key, and a place to
start. With them, anything is possible.
Without them, very few things are.

Your thoughts?

(Edit: 4/9 more on the topic)