Almost two years ago, when my daughter was in the seventh year, I took her to see the film adaptation of the classic novel Judy Blume “Are you there? It’s me, Margaret. ”
On one scene Margaret sits in the auditorium of their school in New Jersey, while the girls in their class watch a movie belt called “What every girl should know”. Despite a combat guitar composition, a woman with a singing voice describes menstruation. “Once a month, velvet lining of blood and tissue is formed in its uterus to produce a warm and nutritious place for the child’s growth,” he says. “If the child is not conceived, the lining is not necessary, so blood will be released.” Margaret and her classmates are terrified and in the theater adult women laughed aloud. “Oh how far we came from the age of 70!” I thought. But my daughter wasn’t laughing. Instead, she leaned and whispered in my ear, “That’s much more than we got!”
As it turned out, my daughter just did not receive less Sex ED in 2023 before the fictitious Margaret had in 1970; No one got. At the beginning of my daughter’s eighth year in my own school in New Jersey, I went to the Vice President to ask why they didn’t teach sex ed. The answer with which he returned: Health classes at school are taught by teachers PE. And gym teachers are not well known for being comfortable to discuss sex with secondary schools.
This discomfort partly comes from a lack of training. Many gym teachers will not receive the professional development needed for self -confidence and to teach sex ed exactly. And many of them would rather teach the gym.
Gym teachers should not be the one to decide whether students learn sex ed, at least not in New Jersey. Sexual education is a state mandate here. So while parents can choose their sex children, schools should not be able to log out of his teaching.
There is a consent on the list of allegedly mandatory topics. I was at the age of 40 to fully grasp the concept of consent. Sex ED, which I grew up in Connecticut, was quite complex, but I only had one word for non -consumption: rape. I considered rape to be a very specific type of attack: visibly violent, saying no.
As for many people, the #MeToo movement opened my eyes for me. It expanded my vocabulary and led me to redefine some key experience of my youth. I realized that the relationship I started when I was a teenager was not just “messy” but emotionally offensive. Meeting shortly after I graduated from college was not a “mistake”; It was a sexual assault. These revelations were upsetting but verifying. Suddenly I understood why I spent a lot of time hiding in my room after graduation. I have understood that emotional abuse may be difficult to find because it may look like passion or love, especially vulnerable teenagers who are new to dating.
But I wonder if I got a better education of consent, when I was young, would I see red flags before? Maybe I would break up with my friend on one of our first data when he threw feces on me? Would I understand that if he aggressively jealous of other people, he dominated, not romantic? What if my friends got better ED consent? Would one of them take me aside and ask if I feel safe?
Sometimes I also ask if the boys who hurt me could behave differently if they He got better ED consent.
The generation of my daughter after #metoo has matched. They heard terms such as “sexual harassment”, “sexual assault” and “emotional abuse”. They watched the predators face the consequences for their actions. However, the gene also watched that some perpetrators of sexual violence rise to power and hold some of the most influential jobs in the world.
Meanwhile, when teenage boys think about consent, many of them undoubtedly deal primarily with protection of themselves – with “abolition”. Most of the perpetrators in this age group are not intentional perpetrators, but without a definitive understanding of what the consent looks like does not necessarily know how to avoid doing something that would cancel them.
There is no clear instructions for young people throughout the country about how to have healthy relationships and connections, no collective understanding of what consent means. They need it desperately, especially now, with a president who was found to be responsible for the sexual abuse of one woman and boasted by the attack of others.
This primary education cannot only come from Squeamish Gym teachers. One of the ideas would be to put more of this work in the hands of the teenagers themselves. This is not without precedens. In 1973, a group entitled Student Committee for Rational Sex Education performed workshops in a dozen public schools in New York. PEER teachers operated educational centers that called “rap rooms” where students could stop during the free period. Unlike their adult counterparts, adolescent teachers made entertaining and playful with ED sex and motivated their peers to voluntarily seek answers to their questions or follow a demonstration of a contraceptive facility.
After about two years, this experiment ended due to bureaucratic obstacles. A similar program focusing on consent is currently active in secondary schools and secondary schools across the country through the organization called Safebae, which means safe from anyone else. According to Safebae research, teenagers are much more perceptive to the consent of reports that come from other teenagers than adults whose language and access tend to feel outdated.
Of course, children will need support for adults to manage the programs led by students. They need teachers and administrators who are perceived to defend students and are well familiar in the head of IX, the Federal law that requires public schools to have established policies and procedures for complaints about sexual violence and harassment. Safebae encourages schools to make silo sex ed to the class Heath, but to incorporate them into discussions of literature and history – let’s say when studying a book like “Scarlet Letter” Or global conflicts in which rape is used as a war weapon. This concept sounds promising, but only if teachers receive professional development around sexual and consent, they may gain education that one of us has barely had when we were teenagers.
My daughter is now a newcomer to high school. And finally she got a little sex. In the eighth grade, after talking to the director, the teacher spoke to the classroom about basic reproduction systems and gave the advisor a presentation of consent. This year her teacher spent the period of coverage of consent laws. All this is better than nothing.
Nevertheless, the system feels insufficient to give children the skills they need to build healthy relationships. Educators do not teach them a meaningful way to see gross behavior or how to approach intimate interactions consensally.
Last year of my daughter in high school will be Donald Trump in office last year. I hope that until then, if we look again “are you there?”, Will be able to tilt during the scene of sexual ed and say, “Thank God we got more than more than more than more than more than more than more that!”
Hillary Frank is a writer and podcaster. She just launched the “longest shortest time” and is the author of the upcoming “Wedlocked” audiobook.
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