The Best News…
By Mitch Berg
…private and charter schools have ever gotten:
People decisively favor letting their public schools provide birth control to students, but they also voice misgivings that divide them along generational, income and racial lines, a poll showed.
Sixty-seven percent support giving contraceptives to students, according to an Associated Press-Ipsos poll. About as many – 62 percent – said they believe providing birth control reduces the number of teenage pregnancies.
85 percent of this particular polling sample also said that giving away Coca Cola in the cafeteria would curb obesity.
November 1st, 2007 at 7:39 am
What a ridiculous idea, birth control preventing pregnancies! This would be a great counter-Darwinian argument, if you knuckleheads believed in Darwin. Wingnut stupidity resultin in more wingnuts!
November 1st, 2007 at 8:14 am
Pretend to be dense all you want, angryclown. Distributing contraceptives to children puts more than pills and prophylactics into the hands, it puts ideas and an expectation of behavior into their heads. It plainly says “we do not think you are capable of virtue”.
November 1st, 2007 at 8:36 am
I think we should give them filtered smokes. Because either way they will smoke, so might as well give them cigs that are less dangerous.
Now, high school kids booze it up. I mean, kids will be kids. So shouldn’t we be handing out 3.2 beer in our public schools. That will keep them off the hard stuff. What would you rather have your kids doing, chugging Jim Beam or being responsible and lapping up some good safe 3.2 beer?
November 1st, 2007 at 9:34 am
Wingnut stupidity resultin(sp) in more wingnuts!
Better get used to it. Wingnuts beget wingnuts, moonbats abort moonbats. In a couple generations, you’ll be having your own abortion boomer retirement crisis, wondering where the hell you all went.
God bless Norma McCorvey…I guess.
November 1st, 2007 at 9:37 am
“it puts ideas and an expectation of behavior into their heads”
Yes, Loni Anderson on WKRP made me want to solve some math problems, but the middle school science teacher fumbling though some charts and diagrams on birth control made me want to get it on with little Sally Q out behind the cafeteria. As I remember it, nothing made me want to think less about sex then the presence of authority figures talking about the subject.
“It plainly says “we do not think you are capable of virtue””
Strange, I thought the more attractive the wrong path, the more virtuous to choose the right path. There is nothing virtuous about not stealing a wallet if you think it likely you would be caught and punished. Virtue lies in not taking a wallet when you know you will not suffer for taking it. You cultivate virtue in children, not by terrorizing them into making the choice you want, but by letting them make the right choice themselves.
November 1st, 2007 at 9:58 am
Trojan Man(!) said: “Distributing contraceptives to children puts more than pills and prophylactics into the hands, it puts ideas and an expectation of behavior into their heads.”
Yeah, cause the last thing teens have on their minds is sex. Best to scare ’em witless rather than give them to tools to prevent unwanted pregnancy and disease.
What a strange, creepy world you wingnuts have created for yourselves.
November 1st, 2007 at 11:36 am
Yeah, AC, Heaven forbid parents have some say over the sexual education and upbringing of their children. Just let the schools decide for you. I don’t know about you, but if I were to raise my children to understand the consequences and responsibilities of sexual promiscuity and instill in them a semblance of what it means to wait until after, maybe, high school to get their groove on, I’d be pretty well pissed off to have them come home with backpacks full of condoms, compliments of a school system that went and told them the exact opposite.
And this is coming from someone who had a dad who was also a sex ed teacher (who taught about sexual contraception without, you know, showering his students with prophylactics).
November 1st, 2007 at 12:15 pm
I think Mitch ment to say: distribute free Diet Coca-Cola.
While we’re at it we should also consider distributing free blanks for handguns.
November 1st, 2007 at 12:19 pm
Yeah, cause the last thing teens have on their minds is sex. Best to scare ‘em witless rather than give them to tools to prevent unwanted pregnancy and disease.
Gotta love how leftists assume lowest common denominator expectations. EVERY teenager is nothing but a container overflowing with hormones and devoid of any brain matter. They’re gonna have sex ANYway.
Amazing that I managed to delay my entry into fatherhood until I was THIRTY TWO.
Gotta love how unwanted pregnancy and disease were so rampant before the sexual revolution of the 60s, and now since contraceptives and sex ed are so universally available for free, unwanted pregnancies and disease are so infrequent of an occurrence, they barely raise a blip on the radar screen. Move along people, nothing to see here.
November 1st, 2007 at 12:30 pm
The Thirty-Two Year-Old Virgin boasted: “Amazing that I managed to delay my entry into fatherhood until I was THIRTY TWO.”
I think that speaks more to the good sense and minimum standards of Minnesota’s ladies than to anything you can take credit for, Bill C.
November 1st, 2007 at 12:36 pm
As opposed to AC, who left a trail of illegitimate children in his wake, like slobber from a doberman.
November 1st, 2007 at 12:48 pm
Troy (et.al.)
One research study on the spread of AIDS after another is coming to the same conclusion, specifically the key to dealing with both AIDS and over population in Africa and other third world areas is empowering women to prevent pregnancy. Such empowerment coming primarly through sex education combined with contraceptives. Part of that is that they often have little choice about becoming sexually active as young as 11 and 12, and of course part is, given a choice, they’d really rather not have 6 or 16 kids, and will take actions to prevent it.
Now I know that Mitch has written repeatedly that a key to avoiding poverty is avoiding being a pregnant single mom – a simplistic, but still accurate comment (simplistic because poverty and pregnancy both have enormous external contributing factors) but still as a result, I know that you wingnuts have been told about how pregnancy at a young age is bad by even people in the rightwingosphere – so I’m just not sure how you can’t put two and two together, that contraceptives and education are just FAR more effective at birth control than polly-anna optimism about abstinence – sometimes abstinance isn’t even an option, other times, it’s just highly unrealistic to believe it will be followed. Studies show that pregnancy and STD rates are equally high among those who take ‘abstinance’ pledges as those who don’t – however, they also show that abstinance programs reduce the overall rates – and they do – among both pledge and non-pledge takers, but the reality is, contraceptives are for those who either don’t agree to, or can’t agree to abstiance. While I understand that your 6th grade sex-ed class made you ‘think’ about sex, did it REALLY take you from a position of complete naivete’ to sex-craven teenie bopper? That’s both dubious beyond words, and ludicrous to suggest. Kids think about sex, I sure did, I’ll bet you did, starting about 13 and not stopping, oh, ever. Sex education or not, they do, and while abstinance is a goal, it’s hardly realistic to expect, given the 3000 or so years of history that says you’d be wrong to, to expect that teenagers are suddenly going to stop having sex pretty broadly, just because we say “Stop it!”. It’s the height of idiocy to say that they’d NOT have sex if we just kept them stupid. The reality is that we’ve tried that in Africa (by refusing to fund education) and the populace is pretty ignorant about sex – and the consequence sure as hell isn’t fewer births – its MANY MANY more. Now I grasp that choice in sexual activity is greatly different, but ignorance is a HUGE part of the issue, and we’re deluding ourselves to think that many of our poorest young women have a whole lot of choice. They are often from a single-parent house, where there is little supervision, they have little opportunity ahead, and a ‘boyfriend’ who is pretty demanding. Rather than be alone, or spurned, or disappoint, they become sexually active. NOT because of a class, not because of contraceptives, but because, to them, why the hell not? It’s not as if they have any (to them) better options. So ignorance, in Africa, and in Watts, is equally the culprit. The girl in Watts knows barely more than the girl in Johannesburg about what will cause pregnancy and what won’t and maybe, just maybe, if we tell her, or gosh worse, give her the means to prevent it, she won’t be 15 with two kids.
But I’m sure it’s really that Sex Ed class ONLY said sex is FUN!!! and didn’t in any way warn her about STD’s, pregnancy, or how to prevent either.
Maybe it’s just that women in Africa simply are smarter than wing-nut teenagers, but here’s a thought, you wanna teach your kids nothing about sex education or contraception, that’s fine, but don’t limit what I’m allowed, through public action, to teach all teenagers, because you know, not all teenagers are wingnuts.
Mitch, where did you get the stat that 85% of the respondants in this poll think giving away coke would cure obesity? Or is this yet more ‘satire?’
November 1st, 2007 at 12:50 pm
Mitch, where did you get the stat that 85% of the respondants in this poll think giving away coke would cure obesity?
It was from someone or other’s Nobel Peace Prize nomination, I think.
November 1st, 2007 at 12:53 pm
Hey Bill,
Given that contraception, prior to the mid-60’s, was prohibited by the Catholic faith, and for that matter, highly frowned on by others, I’m afraid the two times aren’t comparable.
Further, given that abortion was illegal, and pregnancies, and incest, often hidden, it would be REALLY really hard to prove the points you’re trying to make.
History is repleat with examples of attempts at effective contraception. Promiscuity is hardly limited to the latter half of the 20th century, or the early stages of the 21st. Even Mitch would have to, as an historian, disagree that sexual promiscuity was somehow only a major problem since 1970.
Your anecdotal life aside, most people are active before 20 (not just most, the vast majority). No one said they didn’t have brains, btw, but recent studies of the brains of adolecents says they in fact have lower judgement capability, because their brains are being restructured with new neural transmission pathways, than adults, by a long way most likely, and maybe even less than a pre-teen. It’s part of the explanation of why many teenagers seem so daffy, so often.
November 1st, 2007 at 12:56 pm
Oh, satire I guess… except of course, it doesn’t fit that definition. It’s not making up your own poll, it’s just putting out obviously ludicrous facts, but without clarifying them as such, to try to say people who said no such thing are stupid, because of the fact you made up.
November 1st, 2007 at 1:16 pm
Peev continually surpasses his own standards for utterly nonsensical, practically endless monologues. Even for Peev, that last lengthy doozy was particularly disjointed and pointless. Of other people, I’d say topping that comment would be impossible, but Peev always continues to surprise, in a very boring and monotonous sort of way.
November 1st, 2007 at 1:19 pm
Yossarian:
“what it means to wait until after, maybe, high school to get their groove on”
What does it mean and how does accurate knowledge and access to contraceptives mean “the exact opposite”?
November 1st, 2007 at 1:33 pm
In and of itself? It doesn’t, necessarily.
Of course, it IS a complete abnegation of parental choice.
Now – combine the official undercutting of applicable family values (as in, the values the individual family wishes to have inculcated) with Hollywood’s pandering to teenage sex, and it doesn’t take a rocket science to figure what the result is going to be.
November 1st, 2007 at 1:36 pm
Rick, don’t be a cockknob. I know that can be a stretch for you but please try.
My parents taught me that keeping it in my pants until I was older was my best chance to get past 18 years old without some serious baggage and that, if I simply couldn’t hold out and just HAD to screw my girlfriend at the time (or words to that effect), to please, please, PLEASE use common sense and protection. It was pretty effective parenting, and I knew if I did, indeed, simply HAVE to pork my girl, the local Kwik Trip had a condom dispenser in the bathroom. EVERYONE knew that. We certainly didn’t require the school to enable us with condoms, which isn’t the job of schools.
As I said, as an additional line of educational defense, my Dad was also the school sex ed instructor (probably one of the best in the state, in my biased opinion), so I’m obviously not a proponent of the abstinence-only approach, although mentioning that abstinence is the best way to ensure no STDs and no pregnancies certainly can’t hurt.
November 1st, 2007 at 1:57 pm
Yossarian:
“My parents taught me that keeping it in my pants until I was older was my best chance to get past 18 years old without some serious baggage and that, if I simply couldn’t hold out and just HAD to screw my girlfriend at the time (or words to that effect), to please, please, PLEASE use common sense and protection”
Do schools teach anything different?
“It was pretty effective parenting, and I knew if I did, indeed, simply HAVE to pork my girl, the local Kwik Trip had a condom dispenser in the bathroom. EVERYONE knew that. We certainly didn’t require the school to enable us with condoms”
The question is not what is “required”, but what is useful. Kids could learn about the four food groups elsewhere, but it is certainly helpful to study nutrition in school. Same with contraception. Kids can certainly learn about / acquire them outside of school, but evidence seems to suggest that making them available through school improves public health outcomes without increasing sexual activity. If I am wrong let me know.
November 1st, 2007 at 2:15 pm
That you can equate learning about the four food groups with handing out contraception is about all I need to know about your thinking.
Nick Coleman just called; he wants his logic back.
November 1st, 2007 at 2:21 pm
Yossarian:
I did not “equate” them. They are different in lots of ways. I said there are both topics which children could learn outside of school, but which it seems useful to teach them about in school. If you disagree feel free to explain.
You seem to concede my initial point at least that the simple fact X could be learned outside of school, does not mean it is not useful to teach X in the school.
November 1st, 2007 at 2:33 pm
I have no problem with the education aspect. None, nada, zip, zilch, zero.
I draw the line with schools stepping beyond their bounds and passing out baby blockers. Hell, maybe they should hand out clean needles and bleach after teaching about the consequences of drug use.
November 1st, 2007 at 3:11 pm
Yossarian:
“I draw the line with schools stepping beyond their bounds and passing out baby blockers”
Why?
November 1st, 2007 at 3:20 pm
Why?
Asked and answered, at least once, by Yossarian (if not others as well) way way above.
I’m going to rechristen you RickObtuse.
November 1st, 2007 at 3:30 pm
Or “Rick2YearsOld.”
November 1st, 2007 at 10:37 pm
RickDFL said:
“You seem to concede my initial point at least that the simple fact X could be learned outside of school, does not mean it is not useful to teach X in the school.”
I think this is a bit of “logic’ that diffuses the focus on essentials in education. And “Education Minnesota” blames (fiscal) conservatives for educational mediocrity. :-/
November 2nd, 2007 at 10:16 am
The Thirty-Two Year-Old Virgin boasted: “Amazing that I managed to delay my entry into fatherhood until I was THIRTY TWO.”
I think that speaks more to the good sense and minimum standards of Minnesota’s ladies than to anything you can take credit for, Bill C.
As you are so apt to do, you thought wrong. SSDD.
November 2nd, 2007 at 4:48 pm
Is there any chance we can analyze this systematically? If it turns out that, on balance, handing out birth control, when controlling for other factors, results in fewer STDs (per capita) and pregnancies (per utero), isn’t that a good thing? I know that doesn’t settle the question, but shouldn’t that bit of reality be part of the discussion?
I’m not sure that the public schools should be in the business of deciding what “virtue” is, when it comes to consensual sexual behavior; I’m not at all sure that I’d like their answers, and am pretty sure that many would strongly dislike their answers. On the other hand, I think it’s not a virtue issue to argue that having a baby before you’re emotionally, physically, and financially able to raise the baby makes less than a lot of sense, and that STDs are, at the very least, a bother.
November 2nd, 2007 at 10:12 pm
I think of virtue as behavior that every responsible adult deems valuable.
I don’t think public schools need to decide what virtue is, they need to be informed by the public they are intended to serve.
I’ll agree that teen pregnancy is no virtue. I won’t agree that the path to virtue begins with enabling vice.
November 2nd, 2007 at 11:51 pm
Troy:
Just cause it is so easy-
“I think of virtue as behavior that every responsible adult deems valuable”
OK Mr. Circular Deffinition, who counts as responsible? For example, is it responsible to hand out condoms or not.
“I don’t think public schools need to decide what virtue is, they need to be informed by the public they are intended to serve.”
There seems to be a dispute amongst members of the public as to exactly what the path of virtue is when it comes to contraception.
November 3rd, 2007 at 8:20 am
OK Mr. Circular Deffinition, who counts as responsible?
That’s one of the things that separates conservatives from lesser Americans; there’s no “who” to that question, merely a definition of “responsibility” that’s generally accepted.
There seems to be a dispute amongst members of the public
And we are making out side of the debate known. Some people seem to find that threatening.