Religions > Atheism > Triumphs of Liberal Education: Sex at School Increasing, Some Educators Say
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Religions > Atheism |
| User: |
"words of truth" |
| Date: |
06 Nov 2005 04:16:43 PM |
| Object: |
Triumphs of Liberal Education: Sex at School Increasing, Some Educators Say |
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/1516704/posts
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2005/11/05/AR2005110501414_pf.html
Sex at School Increasing, Some Educators Say
By Tara Bahrampour and Ian Shapira
Washington Post Staff Writers
Sunday, November 6, 2005; C01
Perhaps the most shocking thing about students having sex in a high
school auditorium was that other students didn't find it very shocking
at all.
"I glanced over and, whatever, I just let him continue on with his
business," said a 16-year-old linebacker on the Osbourn High School
football team who, along with a friend, stumbled upon a couple engaging
in oral sex. "I stayed for five to eight minutes, just talking. We
weren't worried about it. When the janitor came in, everyone started
running."
Manassas school officials weren't as laid back. The students -- eight
in all -- were quickly identified and suspended, and the matter
prompted the small school system to confront an issue many adults would
rather not face: in this case, two girls and three boys engaging in
oral sex or intercourse on school property while three other boys
watched, according to sources familiar with what happened.
"In all the years that I've been in education, I've never run into this
one before," said John Boronkay, the school system's acting
superintendent. "It's a new one."
Actually, it's not so new. According to some teenagers, sex on school
property is more frequent than adults might imagine. And some adults
who work with teenagers said it's happening more often these days.
There's anecdotal evidence to support that:
Two students were discovered recently having sex in an Anne Arundel
County high school gym. Four students at Col. Zadok Magruder High in
Rockville were arrested in June after performing sex acts in the school
parking lot. A boy and a girl at Springbrook High in Silver Spring were
caught "touching inappropriately" in a school bathroom. Last year,
three teenage boys at Mount Hebron High in Howard County were arrested
after a student accused them of sexually assaulting her in a school
restroom, but charges were dropped after the boys said the sex was
consensual and the girl recanted.
"Students would have intercourse on the stairwells, locked classrooms,
in the locker rooms," said Ihsan Musawwir, 18, a recent graduate of
Dunbar Senior High School in the District. "It was embarrassing for me
to walk in on it."
Jessica Miller, 19, who graduated in June from T.C. Williams High
School in Alexandria, said that for some students there, sex on campus
is a popular fantasy -- and sometimes a reality -- particularly in the
auditorium.
"It's so big, it's so dark," Miller said. "There's a lot more places to
find privacy -- behind the stage and on the catwalk."
But what's the appeal? "Just being rebellious," she said. "Coming back
to class and saying, 'Ooh, guess what I just did? I just had sex in the
auditorium.' "
Deborah Roffman, a Baltimore-based sexuality educator, said she has
been hearing more about similar occurrences in the past five years.
"Schools are calling me, asking, 'What do we do? We've had this
incident at our school.' "
The fact that teenagers have sex is well established: Roughly half of
all 15- to 19-year-olds have had vaginal intercourse, and more than
half have had oral sex, according to the Centers for Disease Control
and Prevention.
But getting a handle on the reasons students are emboldened to risk
having sex at school is as tricky as figuring out how many are doing
it. Musawwir, the Dunbar graduate, who has helped lead teen forums on
sex, said she thinks students have sex in school because they have
nowhere else to go. "And it's the thrill of getting caught or not. And
the media has a lot of things to do with it. They think that if they
see it on TV, they can get away with it in real life."
For example, the popular movie "Mean Girls" -- a comedy about clique
warfare in high school -- showed a girl in a bra and skirt making out
with a guy in briefs in the school auditorium's projection room.
Cpl. Michael Rudinski, president of the Maryland Association of School
Resource Officers, said teenagers do whatever they think their peers
are doing, whether they are or not. "The thing about young people is
when they see things in the mass media and they think it's going on,
they start doing it."
A 16-year-old who said she is friends with one of the girls at Osbourn
who was suspended said the episode wasn't surprising. "It wasn't that
big of a deal," she said. But she said her friend "regrets what she
did. She knows it wasn't a smart thing to do. But everybody whispering
about her doesn't help."
Not all teenagers accept such incidents as "no big deal." A few nights
after the Osbourn news broke, students from T.C. Williams, standing in
a drizzle to cheer on a girls field hockey game, pronounced it "weird"
and "embarrassing."
"What do you call it -- orgies?" 17-year-old senior Emilie Jackson
said, giggling as she tried to come up with the word. "They don't
happen. That's not normal teenage behavior."
"I would just wonder, like, what's going through their heads -- like,
'Okay, guys, let's meet at 3:30 behind the curtain?' " she said.
It can be hard to police everything that goes on at school, especially
after hours, when club meetings, sports practices and rehearsals take
place. In many schools, hall monitors and other adults stay late to
make sure students are there for legitimate reasons.
But even adults do not always know how to handle the sex issue. An Anne
Arundel teacher said he found two students having sex last year on the
wrestling mats in a high school auxiliary gym. The teacher, who
declined to be named, said he didn't report the couple because he was
worried about repercussions for them -- or himself.
"I've seen and heard situations when you don't have support. These
stories come back and kick you in the face," said the teacher, who is
in his thirties.
He said he doesn't think an adult's word is worth as much as it used to
be. "Kids have a voice or whatever, which is great, but at the same
time, you see [teachers] who step up and say something and they get
mashed."
Many schools don't have rules specifically banning sex on campus but
punish students who do it through a clause prohibiting "immoral
conduct" or behavior that offends the community's morals, said Naomi
Gittins, a staff attorney at the National School Boards Association.
Gittins added that more specific policies would make it easier for
schools to defend themselves against legal challenges.
After the janitor reported the Sept. 28 incident at Osbourn High,
school officials checked security cameras and identified eight students
who had entered the auditorium. The three who watched were suspended
for five days; the others for 10. One of the two girls claimed she was
coerced, but police did not find enough evidence to file charges.
School administrators are drafting a rule that bans sex on school
property.
Some students at Osbourn noted a double standard among their
schoolmates, saying the girls involved were being called "sluts" and
"whores" while the boys faced censure mostly because some felt they had
jeopardized the football team.
"I don't think any of the guys [in school] really admired any of the
people involved," said Tim Blank, 18, a senior on the Osbourn football
team and an editor on the school paper. He said his teammates were
angry with the male participants, all of whom were on the team, because
they were top players and their suspensions threatened the season.
"We had gone through three years of hard times, [and] we finally got
off to a hot start," Blank said.
Parents complained that they did not hear from the Manassas School
Board about the auditorium incident until nearly three weeks later in a
letter.
"I was waiting for some type of communication from the school," said
Cindy Brookshire, 51, a parent who heard about the incident from her
son. "Nothing came out except rumors."
Arthur P. Bushnell, the School Board chairman, said board members
waited to inform parents until it was clear what the punishments would
be.
Some parents said the matter got them talking to their children in
discussions they might not have at Osbourn, where, according to the
school system's director of instructional services, Sandy Thompson,
health classes focus on abstinence and sexually transmitted diseases
but not condoms or contraception.
Miller, the T.C. Williams graduate, said she didn't understand why
adults were so shocked. "Our parents are the ones who had the sexual
revolution, so why are they surprised?"
Parents at Osbourn said what happened in the auditorium went far beyond
their own teenage activities, and some added that they were confident
that their children would not get involved in such an incident.
"Maybe I'm a naive parent," said Ted Hauffe, whose son, Daniel, is on
the football team, "but I will say my kid would never participate" in
group sex.
As to warning teenagers off sex, he said, "You can preach that as a
parent, and hopefully they will listen to you, but when it comes to
that particular moment of passion, what are you going to do?"
Blank's father, Bryan Blank, said that compared with when he was young,
"Society is more open. You see two women kissing on MTV. You have
things talked about, like 'straight versus gay.' "
Asked whether the incident related to any cultural trend or had any
deeper meaning, a group of boys watching the T.C. Williams field hockey
game scoffed. "It means there's eight weirdos around," said Alex
Haitsuka,17, a junior.
"I'd become very unaroused" at the sight, he added. "Nine hundred out
of 901 people would not want to be involved."
Matt Killeen, 18, a senior, said he also found it shocking.
"Can't you just wait till you're at home?" he asked.
Staff writers Maria Glod, Daniel Lyght, Theola S. Labbe and Ylan Mui
and researcher Magda Jean-Louis contributed to this report.
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| User: "Paul Duca" |
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| Title: Re: Triumphs of Liberal Education: Sex at School Increasing, SomeEducators Say |
07 Nov 2005 01:31:37 AM |
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Ånd you still resent no one putting out for you?
Paul
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| User: "Enkidu the Atheist" |
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| Title: Re: Triumphs of Liberal Education: Sex at School Increasing, Some Educators Say |
06 Nov 2005 04:28:48 PM |
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"words of truth" <wordsoftruth@hoshmail.com> wrote in
news:1131293803.713555.283020@g14g2000cwa.googlegroups.com:
Sex at School Increasing, Some Educators Say
At best, anecdotal. More likely, any such increase is due to Christians
and their "Just say no" sex education plan.
--
Enkidu AA#2165
EAC Chaplain and ordained minister,
ULC, Modesto, CA
PGP ID: 0xC4CE8CF0
Creationists make it sound as though a "theory" is something you dreamt up
after being drunk all night.
-- Isaac Asimov (attributed: source unknown)
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| User: "MarkA" |
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| Title: Re: Triumphs of Liberal Education: Sex at School Increasing, Some Educators Say |
06 Nov 2005 07:54:52 PM |
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On Sun, 06 Nov 2005 16:28:48 +0000, Enkidu the Atheist wrote:
"words of truth" <wordsoftruth@hoshmail.com> wrote in
news:1131293803.713555.283020@g14g2000cwa.googlegroups.com:
Sex at School Increasing, Some Educators Say
At best, anecdotal. More likely, any such increase is due to Christians
and their "Just say no" sex education plan.
I saw an interview on some "liberal" TV show. The interviewee was a girl,
now a college student, trying to get a sex education class into her public
high school. She had gotten pregnant because her boyfriend had told her
that she couldn't get pregnant if she went to the bathroom right after
intercourse. Her school was in a very strict, Baptist community, and the
only sex education they had was a priest who told them that if they have
sex before marriage they will burn in Hell.
For some strange reason, she feels that isn't enough. She wants to
establish a *real* sex ed program, so others don't make the mistakes she
made. So far, she has been turned down every time she has approached the
school board about revising the existing class.
When ignorance is bliss, it is foolish to be wise...
--
MarkA
(still caught in the maze of twisty little passages, all different)
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| User: "Ike" |
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| Title: Re: Triumphs of Liberal Education: Sex at School Increasing, Some Educators Say |
06 Nov 2005 04:31:33 PM |
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"words of truth" <wordsoftruth@hoshmail.com> wrote in message
news:1131293803.713555.283020@g14g2000cwa.googlegroups.com...
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/1516704/posts
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2005/11/05/AR2005110501414_pf.html
Sex at School Increasing, Some Educators Say
By Tara Bahrampour and Ian Shapira
Washington Post Staff Writers
Sunday, November 6, 2005; C01
All the fault of Liberal educators. Cut off their funds and close all the
schools. America needs innovation from the young!
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| User: "Malcolm" |
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| Title: Re: Triumphs of Liberal Education: Sex at School Increasing, Some Educators Say |
06 Nov 2005 08:55:32 PM |
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"Ike" <accordiondocxyzxyzxyz@mindspring.com> wrote
Sex at School Increasing, Some Educators Say
By Tara Bahrampour and Ian Shapira
Washington Post Staff Writers
Sunday, November 6, 2005; C01
All the fault of Liberal educators. Cut off their funds and close all the
schools. America needs innovation from the young!
Exactly.
Chrisitian parents shouldn't send their children to schools like that.
It s possible to teach children at home, or for three of four families to
get together to arrange to educate their children privately.
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| User: "G*rd*n" |
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| Title: Re: Triumphs of Liberal Education: Sex at School Increasing, Some Educators Say |
06 Nov 2005 05:27:07 PM |
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"words of truth" <wordsoftruth@hoshmail.com>:
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/1516704/posts
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2005/11/05/AR2005110501414_pf.html
Sex at School Increasing, Some Educators Say
By Tara Bahrampour and Ian Shapira
Washington Post Staff Writers
...
Actually, it's not so new. According to some teenagers, sex on school
property is more frequent than adults might imagine. And some adults
who work with teenagers said it's happening more often these days.
There's anecdotal evidence....
'Nuff said.
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| User: "Martin" |
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| Title: Re: Triumphs of Liberal Education: Sex at School Increasing, SomeEducators Say |
06 Nov 2005 08:24:10 PM |
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words of truth wrote:
Perhaps the most shocking thing about students having sex in a high
school auditorium was that other students didn't find it very shocking
at all.
shocking! In my day it was behind the bike-sheds with the smokers :~
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