Illinois Teachers: Let's Not Talk About Sex

By Andrew Peerless in News on Mar 15, 2005 2:32PM

A statewide survey has found that Illinois teachers, in general, are sadly ignoring the advice of Salt-N-Pepa, and talking about sex for an average of only twelve total hours per year for their middle and high school students.

The study of more than 330 teachers in 200 public schools, which was commissioned by Planned Parenthood and the Illinois Caucus for Adolescent Health, has discovered that 60 percent of high school teachers are glossing over important issues such as contraception, birth control, sexual orientation and abortion, and favoring the Bush administration's federally-funded educational push for abstinence. Furthermore, a full 15 percent couldn't even find time to teach the basics of contraception, pregnancy and childbirth... whatever those are.

Sure, a few of those issues seem sorta hot-button for the "values"-oriented America of 2005... but that said, more than 80 percent of residents actually want and expect their children to learn about contraception and disease prevention in school-sponsored sex education programs.

At the same time, proponents of abstinence-only programs such as Project Reality think their message is really sinking in with kids, who "want strong messages that will help them resist pressure from peers and the media to engage in sex outside marriage." Chicagoist must have gone to an unusually perverted high school, because pretty much everyone we remember was anxious to not only learn about sex, but to get the ball rolling in the ol' boudoir, as well. Mmmm hmmm...

In any case, Illinois schools are not actually required to teach sex education, and receive no state funding to do so. That means the teachers that do decide to tackle this issue are left to their own devices... which is even scarier than it sounds, when you factor in that P.E. teachers are resonsible for 35 percent of sex education statewide. Chicagoist's P.E. teacher was a manly, scary woman named "Louise" who spoke incessantly about her well-respected collection of frilly dolls.

Now where does the boy part go again?

Image courtesy of popcouncil.org