Religious group teaches unusual sex-ed lessons in Maryland PUBLIC schools

[xoxoxoBruce]

rkzenrage, for religious people it's as easy as you separating your illness from your profession.

[9th Engineer]

I really got a good laugh from the part where the kids ate the chocolate anyway, any way to pump up both the scale of this and the strength of laxitive? Could become very good entertainment. I don't think anyone would feel sympathy for someone who would risk shitting themselves just for a few seconds of a pleasent taste.
Maybe we could substitute the lax with something that would stain their lips blue for a few days or something like that. Sort of a badge saying "I'm incredibly stupid"

Originally Posted by xoxoxoBruce

rkzenrage, for religious people it's as easy as you separating your illness from your profession.

I guess that is why the AU is run by religious organizations?
An intelligent religious person wants separation more than the secular.
The state is as much as a threat to them as they are to the state... separate is the only rational person's system.

[Flint]

Originally Posted by xoxoxoBruce

rkzenrage, for religious people it's as easy as you separating your illness from your profession.

I need a smilie of a referee throwing a penalty flag.

#1: Illness is not voluntary, religion is. If you choose to adhere to a religion, you still have the responsibility to behave according to the standards of the society you live in. If certain people have an excuse to break the rules, what you have is anarchy.

#2: Religion is not analogous to an illness...bet you never thought I'd say that!

#3: An illness is not analogous to religion, neither is homosexuality.

[xoxoxoBruce]

That's all well and good but not that easy. 30% is black and white, but 70% is a broad range of gray. The gray areas will be lighter or darker depending on perspective. Saying it is easy, doing it is not.

Actually I'd prefer the schools to be teaching real subjects, but historically, we know the parents don't/won't.

Most of us here think the message being taught by Rockville Pregnancy Center is at best incomplete. I'd have little problem with it, if the school brought in another group next week, like Planned Parenthood, to teach contraception. That would give the kids the whole ball of wax.

But, and it's a big but, what do the parents want taught? What do the parents want the schools to give their kids besides the book learnin'? I think they deserve to be consulted of this.

You might be able to make a case for contraception and STDs in Biology class, but not everybody takes Biology. So what subject heading does this fall under, for the whole school? Very gray.

[xoxoxoBruce]

Originally Posted by Flint

I need a smilie of a referee throwing a penalty flag.

#1: Illness is not voluntary, religion is.

That would seem logical but not always true. Some people have no control over their religious belief, for anyone of a multitude of reasons, primarily youth indoctrination but there are more. You may think they're irrational because you can't fathom they could be right. They can.
My comparison is, that for many it permeates their life and effects everything they do and say, just as rkz's illness effects every aspect of his life. If he thinks I made an unfair comparison, he can say so.

If you choose to adhere to a religion, you still have the responsibility to behave according to the standards of the society you live in. If certain people have an excuse to break the rules, what you have is anarchy.

Quite right, but who sets the standards for social behavior? The majority. Prevailing community standards have been mentioned quite often in legal precedents, when social legislation is attempted. Not rights of the individual, or even the minority, prevailing community standards set by the majority.

#2: Religion is not analogous to an illness...bet you never thought I'd say that!

Bet you never thought you'd say that.

#3: An illness is not analogous to religion, neither is homosexuality.

Well duh.

Originally Posted by xoxoxoBruce

That's all well and good but not that easy. 30% is black and white, but 70% is a broad range of gray. The gray areas will be lighter or darker depending on perspective. Saying it is easy, doing it is not.

Actually I'd prefer the schools to be teaching real subjects, but historically, we know the parents don't/won't.

S-what private school is for.

Most of us here think the message being taught by Rockville Pregnancy Center is at best incomplete. I'd have little problem with it, if the school brought in another group next week, like Planned Parenthood, to teach contraception. That would give the kids the whole ball of wax.

Incompetent and possibly dangerous, not incomplete.

But, and it's a big but, what do the parents want taught? What do the parents want the schools to give their kids besides the book learnin'? I think they deserve to be consulted of this.

You might be able to make a case for contraception and STDs in Biology class, but not everybody takes Biology. So what subject heading does this fall under, for the whole school? Very gray.

Keep in mind, if you don't want your kids in sex-ed, you can opt them out. I have never heard, or read, of a school system, and it was this way when I was in school and teaching (we taught it in Science where it belongs).
If parents did their job and taught their kids about sex and contraception this would be a non-issue.

Everyone, once they are old enough to read & think for themselves and access to a library has control over their religious beliefs.

Originally Posted by Flint

I need a smilie of a referee throwing a penalty flag.

#1: Illness is not voluntary, religion is. If you choose to adhere to a religion, you still have the responsibility to behave according to the standards of the society you live in. If certain people have an excuse to break the rules, what you have is anarchy.

#2: Religion is not analogous to an illness...bet you never thought I'd say that!

#3: An illness is not analogous to religion, neither is homosexuality.

Now wait a min. Many of the religious say that homosexuality is an illness, perhaps...

[9th Engineer]

Why should it be up to the parents what gets taught to their kids? The single purpose of an education is to create a productive adult. Tainting the facts that make up a good education with emotion produced maladjusted adults. Take the trend of sheltering students from the uncomfortable aspects of life as an example of bad teaching. Teachers are told not to use red to grade papers because it can cause 'emotional stress', students are later unprepared for rejection and expect other adults around them to continue sheltering them. P.E. is removed from the list of mandatory classes, students stop seeing physical activity as part of an everyday routine. We tell every student that they are gifted and special without any connection to their achievements, students go on to expect any half-assed effort on their part to be highlighted and praised as if it was acceptable. This is why America is dividing into two populations, and the opposite trend has turned Japan into a powerhouse with the rest of Asia soon to follow.
My point is that parents don't make decisions based on the real best interests of their children. Many parents are nothing more than bloated children themselves. Scientists will decide the science background that every highschool graduate should have. Doctors will decide what they should do to stay healthy, and how they should protect themselves from disease. Historians will decide what history they should learn, and economists will teach them how to make smart financial decisions to name a few catagories. If a parent is not one of these things, then they do not have the prerequisite knowledge to say what parts of it are important for their child to know.
Leave these decisions to the respective professional communities already well developed in this country, not politicians and people with no basis on which to make them.

The single purpose of an education is to create a productive adult.

You have got to be kidding with that? Really, you think so?
The purpose of education is to Educate, that is it. Because the role of doing more by slacker parents and hippy governments has tried to thrust more upon educators does not mean it is, or should be, so.
Parents are to P-A-R-E-N-T not me, my job was, and sometimes now, to teach my subject.
Part of that will be to give life lessons, withing the context of the lessons of my subject but ONLY within that context.

[9th Engineer]

No using a word to define itself rzkn. An education is about imparting useful knowledge, not stuff that makes us feel good. Besides, we're way past the point where most parents can be trusted, and it takes a hell of a lot more than life wisdom imparted my mom and pop to make a kid successful in life.

Originally Posted by 9th Engineer

No using a word to define itself rzkn. An education is about imparting useful knowledge, not stuff that makes us feel good. Besides, we're way past the point where most parents can be trusted, and it takes a hell of a lot more than life wisdom imparted my mom and pop to make a kid successful in life.

Yup, reading, writing, humanities and arithmetic.

We live in a free society, not one where we are wards of the state.
It is not the state's place to make those decisions for the parents, if the parents want that, they will put their kids up for adoption.

[9th Engineer]

The 'state' is not the one making decisions for the parent, it is other individuals who are better qualified to make those decisions. Within reading, writing, and arithmetic very few parents can make a well informed decision about what specifics are important for their children to know. As a society we benefit from our collective knowledge, most people happily accept advice from professionals at other times. Why is this different?

individuals who are better qualified to make those decisions.

I would not want you within a thousand yards of my kid.

Why is it different? I say again... we are not wards of the State. What about this confuses you?

[9th Engineer]

I don't want someone with a degree in philosophy deciding whether my kid needs calculus in highschool any more than you do, that's mismatching professions. However we are suffering from parents who are holding their kids back because they have no idea what it really takes to thrive in the world as it is today, not as it was when they were in highschool. You won't answer my question though, what makes the majority of parents qualified to make these sorts of educational decisions??

Not educational decisions... administrators and teachers decide curriculum for classes. I don't think those classes should teach kids how to think and believe. They should be objective.
If you don't want your kid to be in an objective system, send them to private school, as I have stated before.