Teens talk....are they listening?

In the continuing battle in this country over Sex Education today's Washington Post article concentrates on what is happening in Montgomery County....some parts of the article for you:

"People talk about sex all the time," said 16-year-old Claire Davey-Karison. "It's casual [conversation], you know. You'll hear gossip. It's no big deal."

But sex education has become a big deal in some Montgomery County schools -- a deal that involves lawyers, organized parent groups and a federal court. Although students like Claire talk about sex in the same casual manner they might discuss last night's homework or the hijinks of Marissa and Ryan on "The O.C.," some adults are less than comfortable with them learning about it -- or certain aspects of it -- in class.

Last month, Superintendent Jerry D. Weast scrapped revisions to the county's health education curriculum, which for the first time allowed eighth- and 10th-grade teachers to initiate discussions about homosexuality. The revised course materials included a video, to be shown to sophomores, that used a cucumber to demonstrate how to put on a condom.

The groups, Citizens for a Responsible Curriculum and Parents and Friends of Ex-Gays and Gays, argued that the condom video would encourage teenagers to have sex and that allowing teachers to discuss homosexuality might send the wrong message to those confused about their sexual identity.

What's more, the groups said students should also be taught that people can choose not to be gay.

The statistics speak for themselves: By the time they have reached their senior year in high school, three out of five young people in the United States have had sex, and one in five of those has had sex with four or more partners, according to the 2001 Centers for Disease Control and Prevention's Youth Risk Behavior Surveillance.

"You can take the sex out of the curriculum, but it's still going to be in society," said Laura, who just finished her sophomore year and would have been in the class introduced to the contested sex-ed curriculum.

A study by the Kaiser Family Foundation on the media habits of young people found that on average, 8- to 18-year-olds watch nearly four hours of television a day and devote nearly two hours a day to listening to music. Another Kaiser report released two years ago said that in a sampling of programming from the 2001-02 television season, 64 percent of the shows included some sexual content, 32 percent had sexual behavior and 14 percent featured strong suggestions of sexual intercourse.

Mark Strom, 16, said adults don't understand something else: In the end, sex education isn't all that exciting.

It's a class, he said. It's a grade.

"People think this stuff is more advanced and racy than it really is," he said. "That's just not true."

There's more at the article for those who sign up to the Post....I will add in closing....Abstinence only programs do NOT work. Most of these sex ed programs do not work. If enough parents out there were doing a good job in talking about sex with their teens it wouldn't even be necessary.