Topic ideas for Friday
Jan/10/2007 20:50
Hi everyone. So I had
an idea for a topic for this Friday. We seem to be
having a lot of religion related discussions and I
thought maybe we could try something new (we are
after all about Freethought, skepticism, etc.) so
here’s what I was thinking we could turn a critical
eye towards:
Sex education (as in what we all had to go through in middle school/high school).
There’s a lot we could look at. For example, in 1997 the Title V Abstinence Education Program was put in place. Congress authorized $50 million of federally funds annually to promote abstinence education programs.
So some possible questions are: is abstinence only education the best choice? What about alternative approaches? Does it seem like there is a religious motivation for the abstinence only programs? What if an alternative program were introduced that did not touch on the “detriments” of pre-marital sex and discussed prophylactics? Is this even something that should be covered in school or left to parents? I don’t know, people can probably come up with things to discuss/debate about this. Here are some websites to get you started (I had trouble finding non-abstinence only websites. Hopefully people will be able to come up with arguments anyway?):
1) Whitehouse's website - Abstinence plan:
http://www.whitehouse.gov/news/releases/2002/02/welfare-book-06.html
2) Pro-Abstinence Website:
http://www.choosingthebest.org/about_us/index.html
3) (Biased) description of Title V Abstinence Education Program - National
Coalition for Abstinence Education:
http://www.sexrespect.com/FundInfo.html
4) Website promoting abstinence (Apparently boys 12- 16 are 4 times likelier to smoke and 6 times likelier to use alcohol than virgins! Girls are 7 times likelier to smoke and 10 times likelier to use marijuana! Yeah, it would be interesting to look over their sources and see how much of this is actually true):
http://www.heritage.org/Research/Abstinence/BG1533.cfm
5) China - Sexual ignorance article:
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/asia-pacific/4572859.stm
Anyway, if people really prefer a different topic for this Friday and send out enough emails saying as much, then we can just pick something else. Either way, hope to see you all at 7:00 this Friday in Riverview!
-Monica
Sex education (as in what we all had to go through in middle school/high school).
There’s a lot we could look at. For example, in 1997 the Title V Abstinence Education Program was put in place. Congress authorized $50 million of federally funds annually to promote abstinence education programs.
So some possible questions are: is abstinence only education the best choice? What about alternative approaches? Does it seem like there is a religious motivation for the abstinence only programs? What if an alternative program were introduced that did not touch on the “detriments” of pre-marital sex and discussed prophylactics? Is this even something that should be covered in school or left to parents? I don’t know, people can probably come up with things to discuss/debate about this. Here are some websites to get you started (I had trouble finding non-abstinence only websites. Hopefully people will be able to come up with arguments anyway?):
1) Whitehouse's website - Abstinence plan:
http://www.whitehouse.gov/news/releases/2002/02/welfare-book-06.html
2) Pro-Abstinence Website:
http://www.choosingthebest.org/about_us/index.html
3) (Biased) description of Title V Abstinence Education Program - National
Coalition for Abstinence Education:
http://www.sexrespect.com/FundInfo.html
4) Website promoting abstinence (Apparently boys 12- 16 are 4 times likelier to smoke and 6 times likelier to use alcohol than virgins! Girls are 7 times likelier to smoke and 10 times likelier to use marijuana! Yeah, it would be interesting to look over their sources and see how much of this is actually true):
http://www.heritage.org/Research/Abstinence/BG1533.cfm
5) China - Sexual ignorance article:
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/asia-pacific/4572859.stm
Anyway, if people really prefer a different topic for this Friday and send out enough emails saying as much, then we can just pick something else. Either way, hope to see you all at 7:00 this Friday in Riverview!
-Monica