Content Alert: Politically Incorrect Material to Follow The Importance of Sex Education As an Algebra teacher who believes in rigorous high standards for my students, I believe that sex education, family planning and life skills are far more important subjects for our students than Algebra! There I said it; and I stand by it. I … Read more
Difficulties with sex education It’s hard to imagine the power of bad information from the home or the street until you experience it. All too often we teachers, trying to present a lesson in as clear, believable and understandable a fashion as we can, wind up seeing our best efforts swept away by some student’s … Read more
Hollywood Romance Movies Actually Teach Sex Abuse! What do Al Pacino, Clark Gable, John Wayne, Sean Connery, Kristin Scott Thomas, Arthur Godfrey (and too many others to list here) have in common? They’ve all made movies or records which show some sort of sex abuse and/or violence as the path to romantic love. Sex abuse … Read more
Sex Abuse and The Chimpanzee Lecture This lesson/lecture is amazingly effective at getting students (as well as adults) to reflect on how they respond to social/sexual interactions and how biology plays a hand in sex abuse. It is culled from a wide variety of readings but you can find most of these ideas in two … Read more
Sex Abuse and Misunderstanding the Law This post is part 3 of a 5 part series on sex abuse education and what I try to teach my students. Part 1 is about Mixed Messages. Part 2 is about my personal experience with sex abuse in Hollywood. Here in Part 3 I’ll examine a common misunderstanding … Read more
Sex Abuse This post is part 2 of a 5 part series on sex abuse education and what I try to teach my students. Part 1 is about Mixed Messages. This post (Part 2) is about my personal experience with sex abuse in Hollywood. I have used it in my classroom when teaching about sexual … Read more
Sex Abuse is in the news again. Sex abuse is in the news again. We’ve heard very disturbing accounts from the accusers. We’ve heard strident denials from the ‘alleged’ offenders. And we’ve heard outrage from pundits and politicians. But we haven’t heard (much, if anything at all) from those parents and teachers, like me, who … Read more
Using Ethics to Stand Up for Labor? Recently, Joy Reid was interviewing James Baker on the Rachel Maddow Show and she missed a golden opportunity to use ethics questions to strike a blow for the workers of America. Ms. Reid isn’t the only interviewer who has missed opportunities to champion labor. I’ve seen it again … Read more
Children ask a lot of questions. They’re supposed to. It is a cornerstone of learning. And I believe it is the duty of adults, parents, teachers, even the whole village, to answer those questions as honestly and unemotionally as we can. But it’s not always easy. Now, I’m not talking about the kinds of questions … Read more
Naive Sophistication Some adults (parents, teachers and pundits) believe that today’s teens are very sophisticated (see my posts on sex education). Some adults (mostly parents and politicians) believe that teens are still very naive (or you could say innocent). What I have observed is a strange combination of both. This can lead to very comedic … Read more