Trump Administration Moves To Defund Teen Pregnancy Research Programs

[Benton]

(07-30-2017, 05:31 PM)TheLeonardLeap Wrote: Fair enough, and that's more of a educational guideline thing than an education funding thing from what you just described.

Moving fairly off topic from the thread but on topic with your post, yeah, I am a bit torn on educational guidelines. On one hand I like the idea of some federal guidelines so we aren't teaching creationism (other than as a religion elective or something), but on the other, too much federal interference in education has gotten us to the point where students aren't taught subjects, so much as taught to pass tests (started getting bad from W Bush's No Child Left Behind, I think).

Kids now are all taught how to pass tests in Chemistry, Pre-Calculus, and Classic English Literature... things that even if you weren't taught only to pass the test would likely be entirely pointless in 97% of people's lives. Meanwhile actual useful things like Home Ec, Shop, and the like have absolutely vanished to make way for more test preparations, and kids coming out of HS now can't cook, or fix anything, or change a flat tire on a car, or basic first aid, or make a budget with their money, or any other actual life skill.

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Back on thread, I think there can be a happy balance between not teaching it in schools and spending large sums of money on extra programs like the one that's being discussed to be defunded 2 years early like this one.

Ugh, even talking about sex ed and STD classes and such makes me remember having to sit through like a 4+ hour Safety Stand Down powerpoint on how your junk will rot off.

To the bold, agreed. And, to an extent, that's why common core was a good (but misunderstood) thing. It allowed schools with a little oversight to say "this is something everyone needs to know... it'll take X amount of instructional time, districts can do whatever they want with what's left." A bad part of it was the time that was left is largely elective time, and many districts don't encourage useful electives. How to cook, fix a tire, not get knocked up, balance a checkbook, that all falls under electives. 


To the last, we didn't have that where I went to school. We had one health class that was required. There was no sex ed or STDs. Those chapters were in the book, but we skipped them, about four chapters. The closest we got was a chapter on puberty which is one of my funniest memories from high school. The teacher gave us the chapter to read, told us there would not be a quiz (we read the chapters and took quizzes at the end of class), then left and came back two minutes before the bell. Nothing close to reproductive was mentioned again, we went back to reading about blood pressure and the food pyramid.

(07-30-2017, 09:42 PM)Dill Wrote: Why can't parents teach children how to cook and fix flat tires?

Chemistry, pre-algebra, and English literature--pointless for people not going to college?

Education is different from vocational training. It is not supposed to be "useful" in the sense shop and home ec are. And education is one of those things that diffrerentiates first world countries from third.  

Like gun safety and hygiene, I teach my kids but realize other parents aren't. In the case of sex ed, it takes two people being honest and knowing what's going on. If one is a clueless idiot who learned everything via porn, it effects the other.