Here’s an interesting Newsweek blog post about a bad headline for a good sex ed policy. The policy essential allows students (at any grade level) to get condoms from a school nurse if they are considering sexual activities. Now before you start questioning whether this policy should be implemented in the schools of one Massachusetts town, read the post.
The blogger, Kate Daily, takes on many controversial questions that would arise with a policy like this. For example, “Wouldn’t passing out condoms encourage kids to have sex?,” “No age limit? Elementary students aren’t having sex, are they?” “Isn’t it the parents’ job to educate their children about sex?”
Daily uses peer reviewed research and the CDC to back up her arguments. I give her post an “A.” Here’s a small quote to give you a sample,
As nice as it would be to think that all 11-year-olds, or 10-year-olds, or 13-year-olds, are immune from sexual pressure, that’s not the case: kids develop on different timelines, and kids date outside their age range. A study in the Journal of Adolescent Health found that more than 40 percent of middle-school students interviewed at one school dated someone two years older or more, and of those students (median age: 11 and a half), they were 30 times more likely to have had sex. And those are the kids most in need of the counseling provided by a caring adult.
Yuka Polovina 