Even with all of our advanced degrees and affordable learning schemes to make college accessible to everyone, America is in danger of perpetuating a culture of adults lacking education.
I'm not talking about a decline in college graduates or a shortage in doctors, lawyers or specialized workers. America has all of those, en masse. I'm talking about the sexual education, that threatening topic that causes most evangelicals to run for the hills. It is emerging that young people in America today, predominantly those raised in Christian homes, have a less than basic understanding of sex and sexuality.
I'm not talking about a decline in college graduates or a shortage in doctors, lawyers or specialized workers. America has all of those, en masse. I'm talking about the sexual education, that threatening topic that causes most evangelicals to run for the hills. It is emerging that young people in America today, predominantly those raised in Christian homes, have a less than basic understanding of sex and sexuality.
The Christian school I attended (fundamental baptist in the Bible Belt) employed teachers who spent hours indoctrinating the pupils, saturating every aspect of life with holiness, the scriptures and platitudes like "God willing" and "thus saith the Lord". When I attended, the school was listed as a college preparatory destination, touting claims of having some of the most academically advanced pupils in the nation ... in the subjects of Bible and Creationism, yes. In terms of math, science, history? Doubt it. In fact, I know the truth: no, no it did not.
But this institution and many like it all over the United States aren't really poised for churning out America's next groundbreaking astrophysicist. They don't have the resources or the funds to send their aspiring politicians to mock debate and Model UN in DC. They don't even make opportunities like this available. Nine times out of ten, they lack some of the most basic courses that should be prerequisites for obtaining any high school diploma, yet because they come under the moniker of being a private school, the state and the country turn their backs and don't question what they teach. Or, as is more apt, what they don't teach.
Here's a big thing they don't teach: sex. At my school, the word itself was considered to be a swear word--uttering it could, at the very least, increase your tally of demerits (six of which led to an after-school detention). I'm sure the school administrators thought they were doing us all a favor, trying to trick us into not talking about the thing that every teenager of a certain age has questions about, hoping that by not talking about it, we would stop thinking about it, too. Their approach had the opposite effect. Instead, the great lengths they took to hide sex and to belabor the notion that it was intended for a man and woman only who had performed some archaic ritual involving rings and every person they had ever met watching was fuel to our hypersexualized fire.
We wanted to know more, not because we aspired to act out perverse sexual fantasies and not because we were sex fiends. We simply had the curiosity about our bodies that they once had, but those curiosities weren't allowed to develop. We weren't allowed to ask questions. It was actually taught to my male pupils that masturbating was a sin. The idea that a woman could masturbate was never even discussed. But, that's not the issue I'm getting at. I'm not suggesting that they should have sat us in a room and explained everything from orgasms to STI, but they should have said something.
Our health classes were divided into guys and girls. Fair enough, keep us separate so we can discuss our individual needs without the immature giggling of boys whispering the word boobies (in my Bobby Boucher voice). In our class, the girl's class, we talked about makeup. Nail polish. Hair conditioner. There was no talk of periods, tampons or pads. There was no mention of breasts and nipples, vaginas, clitorises and labias.
Here's the damage: when no one talks about sex and gives you informed, practical advice about it, you have to go out and find out about it on your own. You Google it, you trust other misinformed teenagers to tell you what's up or you just don't ask the questions you need to ask. That doesn't mean you won't try it. The number of kids having sex at my high school (in my high school, during school hours) would astound the administrators. If adults aren't going to teach mature teenagers about sex, they're going to find out themselves, in ways that adults aren't going to like.
Pregnancy cover ups, pregnancy scares, lust-filled afternoons while mommy and daddy were at work, quick orgasms in the backs of buses and cars or empty classrooms: my fellow students were masters of awkward, bad sex and they were driven to it because of a lack of information. What's worse, a lack of information about sex created an environment where students didn't feel comfortable talking about situations of abuse or rape. I mean, why should they? How could they even broach the subject? If all you've spoken to your health teacher or PE instructor about is foundation, eyeliner and getting your gym shorts measured to make sure they come to the middle of your knee, you're going to find it pretty difficult to say, "I think I was raped".
If Christians continue to raise their children this way and perpetuate this type of secrecy surrounding sex, rapes and sexual abuse will continue to happen and continue to be unreported. Unwanted pregnancies will keep increasing and more and more adults will know less about their own bodies than they know about obscure academic subjects.
Keeping sex quiet isn't in the best interest of anyone. Teenagers are going to engage in some type of sexual activity regardless. But wouldn't it be far better if we were assured that they could identify the signs of abuse and felt comfortable reporting them? Wouldn't it be better if they knew what to look for when they needed help and had someone they trusted they could turn to talk about sex with instead of ferreting it away and being stunted and dumb?
But this institution and many like it all over the United States aren't really poised for churning out America's next groundbreaking astrophysicist. They don't have the resources or the funds to send their aspiring politicians to mock debate and Model UN in DC. They don't even make opportunities like this available. Nine times out of ten, they lack some of the most basic courses that should be prerequisites for obtaining any high school diploma, yet because they come under the moniker of being a private school, the state and the country turn their backs and don't question what they teach. Or, as is more apt, what they don't teach.
Here's a big thing they don't teach: sex. At my school, the word itself was considered to be a swear word--uttering it could, at the very least, increase your tally of demerits (six of which led to an after-school detention). I'm sure the school administrators thought they were doing us all a favor, trying to trick us into not talking about the thing that every teenager of a certain age has questions about, hoping that by not talking about it, we would stop thinking about it, too. Their approach had the opposite effect. Instead, the great lengths they took to hide sex and to belabor the notion that it was intended for a man and woman only who had performed some archaic ritual involving rings and every person they had ever met watching was fuel to our hypersexualized fire.
We wanted to know more, not because we aspired to act out perverse sexual fantasies and not because we were sex fiends. We simply had the curiosity about our bodies that they once had, but those curiosities weren't allowed to develop. We weren't allowed to ask questions. It was actually taught to my male pupils that masturbating was a sin. The idea that a woman could masturbate was never even discussed. But, that's not the issue I'm getting at. I'm not suggesting that they should have sat us in a room and explained everything from orgasms to STI, but they should have said something.
Our health classes were divided into guys and girls. Fair enough, keep us separate so we can discuss our individual needs without the immature giggling of boys whispering the word boobies (in my Bobby Boucher voice). In our class, the girl's class, we talked about makeup. Nail polish. Hair conditioner. There was no talk of periods, tampons or pads. There was no mention of breasts and nipples, vaginas, clitorises and labias.
Here's the damage: when no one talks about sex and gives you informed, practical advice about it, you have to go out and find out about it on your own. You Google it, you trust other misinformed teenagers to tell you what's up or you just don't ask the questions you need to ask. That doesn't mean you won't try it. The number of kids having sex at my high school (in my high school, during school hours) would astound the administrators. If adults aren't going to teach mature teenagers about sex, they're going to find out themselves, in ways that adults aren't going to like.
Pregnancy cover ups, pregnancy scares, lust-filled afternoons while mommy and daddy were at work, quick orgasms in the backs of buses and cars or empty classrooms: my fellow students were masters of awkward, bad sex and they were driven to it because of a lack of information. What's worse, a lack of information about sex created an environment where students didn't feel comfortable talking about situations of abuse or rape. I mean, why should they? How could they even broach the subject? If all you've spoken to your health teacher or PE instructor about is foundation, eyeliner and getting your gym shorts measured to make sure they come to the middle of your knee, you're going to find it pretty difficult to say, "I think I was raped".
If Christians continue to raise their children this way and perpetuate this type of secrecy surrounding sex, rapes and sexual abuse will continue to happen and continue to be unreported. Unwanted pregnancies will keep increasing and more and more adults will know less about their own bodies than they know about obscure academic subjects.
Keeping sex quiet isn't in the best interest of anyone. Teenagers are going to engage in some type of sexual activity regardless. But wouldn't it be far better if we were assured that they could identify the signs of abuse and felt comfortable reporting them? Wouldn't it be better if they knew what to look for when they needed help and had someone they trusted they could turn to talk about sex with instead of ferreting it away and being stunted and dumb?