Health Class: An Unhealthy Skepticism

    Health class didn’t have many new flaws that I could develop whole posts on, so I’ll just summarize the quarter in one lengthy one.

    Mr. B, my health teacher, does not just recite the health curriculum. He preaches it, with passion and conviction. If there is the middle-school-teacher equivalent of a fire-and-brimstone preacher, that is Mr. B.

    Of course, he can’t actually tell us we’re going to hell if we have premarital sex or get an abortion, though he may as well.

    He is also one of the school’s biggest sticklers for collaboration (cue sunshine, rainbows, and unicorns barfing glitter). He religiously follows his group-generating computer program, which sorts us into groups by our assigned numbers (I’m sorry, but does that remind anyone else of The Giver?) for every stupid assignment. We have to read whatever agonizing two-page document we’re writing about (out loud, and preferably taking turns so everyone gets a chance to contribute), then fill in each box at a time. God forbid we get ahead of the timer and do box number 3 when we were supposed to still be doing box number 2, especially if there are a whole twenty seconds of friend-making goodness left on box number 2. And, of course, we have to brainstorm each and every answer as a group and encourage everyone to share their valuable ideas about how Josh could tell Maria he doesn’t want to have sex with her yet.

    SO STUPID.

    We had one assignment where we were supposed to get into groups and create a skit promoting abstinence and sharing our opinions on why teens should wait to have sex (because, of course, the extremely convincing, teen-friendly, not-remotely-influenced-by-religion abstinence lessons transforms everyone in the classroom into a good little child who won’t dream of ever flushing their lives down the toilet by having sex - there’s no chance anyone has *gasp* different opinions). This horrified my mother - and I can’t say I felt too different, though I was more or less resigned to it at that point. I mean, it’s one thing to force opinions down our throats, it’s another to make us regurgitate them and present them as our own.


    Oh - and then, to give us ideas for our skit, Mr. B treated us to two brief videos meant to inspire us. The first featured Benjamin Franklin saying, “I’m here to talk to you about abstinence. You may think teen pregnancies can never happen to you. Well, think again! [Quotes statistic]” (The link below is from Bing, because I couldn't find it on its original website, teenpregnancy.org) Then it ends with the particularly charming, "So, before you have sex, think of me, Benjamin Franklin!"

    Um…

    So now some old white guy in a wig who lived so long ago that abortions and birth control didn’t exist, premarital sex just wasn’t acceptable, and girls were supposed to stay at home and raise children, is considered someone we’ll want to listen to?

    First of all, he knows nothing about how modern society views sex and gender roles, so he’s not even a valid symbol. Second, is he supposed to be like, “Oh, boys and girls of the 21st century, if you ever have questions about sex, come to me! I’m only a couple hundred years older than you. You can trust me. I’m just like one of you!”

    No. That’s creepy. It’s not funny and it’s even less effective.

    The second video was a teenage boy begging a crying baby to stop crying just for one night - I assume he was portraying a teen father.

    Not that I know much about parenthood, but isn’t that how it goes? Babies cry. You lose sleep begging your infant to calm down and receive no reward for it. It’s not like if you wait until marriage, parenting is suddenly some perfectly smooth ride where everyone gets lots of sleep and the children are always pleasant and agreeable. Ultimately, parenthood is parenthood, teen parent or not. So is the goal to keep us from ever having babies? Is the point of the video to leave this generation permanently disillusioned with the notion of ever becoming a parent?

    The rubric was typical. I don’t remember too much, but there’s stuff like Our health enhancing position (abstinence) is extremely clear. You know, just in case we hadn’t gotten the message the first 13 squillion times.

    Only one group prepared an actual skit, as opposed to a brief speech or something. It was kind of funny, I’ll admit, but…well, here’s how it went down:

Tom: [Pretends to knock on student who is playing door, for lack of a third role]
Grace: [Pretends to open “door”] Yes?
Tom: [Giggling awkwardly in a manner I can’t imagine was in the script, but is realistic regardless] Um, so, hey, do you wanna have sex?
Grace: Why?
Tom: [Looking genuinely confused] Um…I don’t know…I guess…because I wanna feel good?
Grace: Well, okay. What should we use?
Tom: Well, I’ve got some condoms…
Grace: I have a better idea.
Tom: What’s that?
Grace: [Smirking slightly] Abstinence. [Slams door]

    Well, on the bright side, Grace has absolutely no chance of getting pregnant with Tom’s child in the near future.

    In fact, Grace will probably never get pregnant with Tom’s child, or, if she keeps this up, with anyone’s, because I foresee a lot of embarrassment, hurt, angry rows, and an inevitable breakup in Tom and Grace’s near future that the skit conveniently omits - not because Grace didn’t want to have sex with Tom, but because Tom was perfectly nice about it, and Grace was a complete jerk to him. Is this the sort of healthy-relationship behavior teachers want to promote? It doesn’t matter if you’re completely rude to your boyfriend/girlfriend, as long as you don’t have sex?

    Mr. B, of course, ate it up with a spoon, which in my humble opinion is sick.

    He also taught us about birth control, which, admittedly, I give him credit for. I didn’t think he had the stomach to explain so many options and how they work. He kind of ruined the effect, though, by going over how effective each method was and then saying, “So, which is the only method that has a complete guarantee of, you know, of not getting pregnant, or getting an STD?”

    Gee, I can’t imagine.

    “That’s right - abstinence. That’s really the only reason I taught you about birth control, so you can see that abstinence is the only method of birth control with a 100% guarantee.”

    One girl asked, “What if you get raped?” to which he simply conceded, “That’s different,” but never elaborated. This had occurred to me - you can plan on abstinence and all, but there’s always a risk.

    As my friend Helene pointed out, that’s not entirely true. If you get a vasectomy or tubal ligation, as long as it's done properly, there’s no chance of getting pregnant. No guarantees about STI’s, admittedly, but still.

    That wasn’t it, though. There was a whole list of reasons abstinence was the best choice for teens - one of the most questionable, in my opinion, being that it was “the expected standard.”

    And we all know how Martin Luther King Jr., and Rosa Parks, and Susan B. Anthony, and Malala Yousafzai (shall I go on?) adhered to their expected standards.

    Then there was the lesson on teen pregnancies, which, of course, they just tied in with the abstinence lessons. It basically portrayed teen pregnancies - the babies, the parents, the pregnancies themselves - as this huge burden on society. He talked about how many tax dollars were spent funding them (I’m not sure what “funding them” meant; for whatever reason, he never elaborated on that either) and had us fill out worksheets listing possible physical, financial, and emotional impacts on teen parents, their parents, and their children.

    Something else my friend Helene pointed out was something that had never occurred to me, but was a very good point nonetheless: There are children in our generation who are themselves the results of unintentional teenage pregnancies. How will it feel to them, being portrayed as burdens? What is the emotional impact on them of seeing the video of a teen mother saying, “I love my daughter, but I really wish I’d never had sex?” and imagining that is how their parents feel about them? The whole guilt tactic strategy won’t just hit teenage parents, they’ll hit their children, possibly harder.

    So there was all this talk and all these contrived worksheets about how you basically give up your life if you have a baby as a teenager, and I kept waiting for them to get to the other options, and they never did. Finally, sick of having to generate innumerable ideas of how caring for a baby would destroy my life, I raised my hand and said, “This is true if you decide to keep the baby, but what if you get an abortion or put the baby up for adoption?”

    “We don’t cover those here,” Mr. B answered, in a tone that indicated that this would change over his dead body, and the subject was dropped.

    I’ll just bet the people writing the curriculum overlooked two major options for teenage mothers completely by accident, and it’s never occurred to them that they’re presenting a completely skewed and inaccurate portrayal of teenage pregnancy. I’m sure they never realized that they are totally failing to educate girls about their options in a situation that will permanently alter their lives. I mean, the adults in charge of deciding what we should learn about healthy relationships and sexualities, how to handle a teenage pregnancy, and even such basic things as reproductive anatomy and feminine hygiene…they obviously have our best interests in mind and wouldn’t leave us uneducated in a desperate, feeble effort to keep us from ever having sex. America is clearly in better hands than that.

Which, I suppose, is also why we have one of the highest rates of teenage pregnancies in the civilized world.

Why Middle-Schoolers Need Real Sex Ed, Part One

    Common Stereotype: Teenagers think about nothing but sex.
    This is false.

    Common Stereotype: Teenagers think about sex an awful lot of the time.
    This is true.

    I’m pretty sure I think about sex a lot less than most of my friends. In fact, I repeatedly entertained the notion of sitting at a different lunch table when Erica kept bringing a book of old-timey insults, slang, and the very strange concepts that started some of these sayings. Let’s just say that ancient Romans came up with many, many perverted ideas, and leave it at that.
    Why can teachers not remember what it was like to be a teenager? I don’t know. The fact is, though, they can’t. And all the science in the world can’t quite measure up to the thoroughly bizarre mind of a middle-schooler.
    The health curriculum is utterly stupid. At least, anything even remotely sexual is taught in a stupid fashion. Really, the whole curriculum is a repeat, from year to year. Maybe three weeks of material in our one quarter a year of health is new from last year’s. So while I don’t yet know what they’re teaching us this year, nearly all of my friends are taking health second quarter, and, at some point or another, have complained about it. And all their complaints are awfully familiar.
    Eighth grade is supposed to be the year where Sex Ed actually teaches about sex rather than the reproductive systems and feminine hygiene. This year is supposed to be the year where we “learn” how babies are made (yeah - if there’s anyone in the eighth grade who doesn’t know at this point, I’ll eat my binder), where we learn about sexual harassment (myth busted), and where we get to see a video of a baby being born (myth confirmed!).
    Many of my friends were discussing the “sexual harassment” lesson during lunch. And no, it wasn’t the sort of thing that would make you lose your appetite, though there have been plenty of conversations along those lines that have forced me to develop an extremely strong stomach. (Never ask your friends anything about Game of Thrones….) I questioned my friend Helene about the lesson, and she explained. Apparently, and please remember I am not an eyewitness (though I will get to take health fourth quarter, same curriculum, and I’ll bet you can guess what the vast majority of my blog posts will be about then), students discussed a text conversation between a girl and a boy. She texted him, What do you like doing after school besides playing basketball? He responded, Making out. I don’t remember all the examples, but they were basically along those lines - just something suggestive said by a friend. This appears to be what they count as sexual harassment. So, while my opinion may very well be disproved when I actually suffer through the course, it appears that the teachers have, yet again, suddenly gone all squeamish right when they get to something interesting. Sigh.
    The thing is, this generation gets some disturbing stuff. Movies, TV shows, websites (<cough>fan fiction<cough>), which, as I can guarantee from experience, one doesn’t need to actually see to hear about.
    In detail.
    As much as this sucks, it is pretty much unavoidable. It’s about as easy to eradicate in a middle school as bullying. And I’m sure glad they haven’t tried, because they would fail at least as spectacularly as they have with bullying, and it would only involve more assemblies and counseling lessons chock-full of uselessness.
    Health teachers don’t know just how little innocence a good deal of us have left. And I’m pretty sure that some of the lesser-known things our generation accepts as normal would still shock most adults.
    I am not saying this to prove that I at least have experience in something over teachers, though the fact that I do does still give me a small jolt of satisfaction, however illogical (since it would hardly be my choice field of expertise). It is simply true.
    So I say, bring it on, health teachers. You are the squeamish ones, not us. We can take whatever diluted version of the truth you deliver.
    Actually, I am questioning the ability of the male participants to hold it together when they see the childbirth video.
    But other than that, we can take it.

Why Middle-Schoolers Need Real Sex Ed, Part Two

    My friend Cassandra was complaining, during the last few minutes of orchestra, about some of the health lessons. She began in a slow, measured fashion. “Apparently,” she stated thoughtfully, “the only way teens can be even slightly intimate,” another pause, “is to hold hands.”
    “Are they showing you that list of ‘appropriate ways for teens to show affection’?” I asked disgustedly. I got it last year. The teacher made a big deal of pointing out that kissing wasn’t on the list.
    “Yes,” she groaned. “It’s all ‘hold hands’ -”
    “And ‘give small gifts’,” I agreed.
    I don’t remember the whole thing. That’s pretty much it. It’s basically a very brief list of nauseating ways to show affection - and, as Cassandra noted, nothing even remotely sexual.
    “Apparently if you kiss someone,” she griped, “they will automatically get HIV. Like, if you have the tiniest cut on your lip, and you kiss someone, they will die.”
    Okay. All the lessons about STD's and teen pregnancies they blabber on about for weeks is probably enough to scare whatever tiny minority may actually have considered randomly having sex in middle school - and if it’s not, nothing will except physical restraint and/or threat of death. But kissing? I’m pretty sure kissing is considered an acceptable practice.
    By the students.
    But as long as it’s a fairly, er, straightforward kiss, and not done in the middle of math class or whatever, seriously, what is the deal? It’s reasonable for teachers to warn us about the dangers of having sex, even if their methods are somewhat questionable. But kissing?
    No one will take them seriously if they tell us all the terrible stuff that can happen if you kiss someone. That’s like a terrorist threatening to bomb America if we don’t give them, let’s say, cloning technology, pay them fifteen billion dollars, and, oh yeah, change the national anthem to “Twinkle Twinkle Little Star.” It would make the small amount of rational advice they give us look less rational because we’d take them less seriously.

     If a man proposes to his girlfriend, can you imagine her gasping, and smiling, and then holding his hand? That sounds like a commercial: Wait! Don't kiss her! You may or may not have a minuscule cut on your lip that will give your beloved HIV if you kiss her! [Cartoon creature hands baffled-looking man box of chocolates.] Remember, if you kiss someone, you may get them sick! Use healthy ways to show affection so you don't give your Significant Other a cold, such as holding hands or giving small gifts! [Flies away wearing superhero cape.]
    Not to mention, but…what about when we’re married? Do marriage vows somehow neutralize whatever viruses may be swimming around in one’s blood? Or are they just telling us to never have sex?
    Hate to break it to you, health teachers, but we all exist because someone had sex. So do you. If no one ever has sex anymore, there will be no next generation to suffer whatever twisted TV shows this one dreams up.
    And, as we exist, it is a pretty safe conclusion that our parents have had sex. And haven’t we all seen our parents kiss each other at times? Are we going to take them seriously if our own parents (who, in my humble opinion, are far more trustworthy than most health teachers), are regularly contradicting their example? If our own existence contradicts their example?
    What about birth control? Are they going to teach us about that? If they do, they’ll be sending mixed messages - would they be promoting asexuality, or safe sex? Yet wouldn’t it be good to learn about - for the people (there are bound to be some) who won’t listen to the don't have sex lesson?

    Additionally, I really don't think there are a lot of people who would actually have sex in middle school. My friends like to talk about it (far more than I like to hear about it), but I don't think any of them are stupid enough to just go out and do it, at least not without any sort of birth control. And whatever they're going to teach us, they don't need to teach us repeatedly. Either one will listen or one won't. Lecturing us about the number of diseases one can get three years in a row will just bore us. If it's going to make an impact on anyone, it will have already. For those who didn't get the message the first time we spent two weeks studying STD's, there will be no understanding, or just no care.

    In short: Health teachers, don't teach us about STD's again. Save your breath. Or better yet, teach us stuff we don't already know, or at least stuff that has a better than thirty percent chance of actually making an impact on us.