Controversy Over Condoms, Safe-Sex Advice for Students
The letter from Barbara Parkinson, Tustin High PTO President (“ACT-UP and AIDS Education in Tustin,” Nov. 19), cries out for response. Mrs. (I presume) Parkinson, her peers and all their predecessors have done such a superb job of preparing each new generation to live satisfying and effective lives in society that we should all be thrilled that she stresses that “teaching our youth about sex and its positive and negative ramifications is an issue that falls under parental domain and educational environments where trained instructors teach district-approved health and sex-education courses”--whatever that means.
How should the “family values” types and their system of imparting knowledge and attitudes about human sexuality and effective human relations be rated? How about a big, fat F?
On what basis do they deserve an F? Why, how many of the sanctified heterosexual marriages so greatly valued by these people succeed? About half end in divorce, and of the half that do not end in divorce, a large portion are rife with dysfunction.
Aside from the miseries attendant to marriage, what else awaits our children and youth as they are prepared by our present system? Unwanted children born out of wedlock and destined to a miserable life of poverty and abuse; the prospect of running the gamut of pro-lifers trying to destroy a major viable alternative--abortion under safe auspices; sexually transmitted diseases that can permanently damage the body or even kill; an adolescence riven with stress and confusion due to not knowing or understanding what is happening to the body or how to intelligently handle the new demands of social conduct; a life lived in misery and ignorance of the dynamics of human relationships and human sexuality. Is it any wonder that teen suicide is a major cause of death among our youth?
And these people want us to continue to rely on the failed family, the failed church, and a public school system prohibited from teaching the factual information that could help greatly to relieve these failures of our present society. In no other area of knowledge are the public schools so systematically prohibited from presenting verified, scientific information. If the schools deliberately concealed the principles of mathematics and science from students in the same fashion as they do the principles of human sexuality, the Mrs. Parkinsons of the nation would demand that they be shut down. And so would I.
As a retired high school principal, I agonize at the know-nothing attitude that has historically controlled curriculum in the areas of human relations and human sexuality. Nothing has changed in our society during my lifetime as far as the zealotry which springs up whenever issues of these sorts are raised.
Bravo ACT-UP! Do it again! At least someone is trying to break the iron grip of the misguided minority that continues today to try to conceal the facts of life from the new generation and to perpetuate the myth that the answer to all things is to “just say no.”
JOSEPH L. McCLEARY, Dana Point
