Multiculturalism destroys civic pride, sex education promotes promiscuity, and we wonder why our kids are so screwed up!
"Many of the nation's middle schools and high schools no longer offer American history," reports Sol Stern in a recent issue of the Manhattan Institute's City Journal. "The majority of American students leave high school historically illiterate." If students are not learning history, what are they learning? Stern points out that "what most schoolchildren get is an unwholesome brew called social studies . . . which present all cultures and civilizations as equal in value. A dash of therapeutic programs, from self-esteem to conflict resolution to AIDS awareness, completes the social studies mix. These topics make at least a smattering of history inescapable," he concedes, "but most high school social studies teachers are ill-equipped to teach even that fragment."
And then, there's sex education, of course. "Sex ed has become nearly ubiquitous," reports Wendy Shalit, "and almost always conveys the same reductive story: sex is all about physical pleasure -- and preventing the unwanted effects of pursuing it." Noting that "37 states and the District of Columbia require schools to provide STD/HIV/AIDS education, and 23 states require comprehensive sex education," Shalit suggests that "the natural embarrassment sex education seeks so prissily to erode points to a far richer understanding of sex than do our most explicit sex manuals. Today," she observes, "those in kindergarten are urged to overcome their 'inhibitions' before they have a clue what an inhibition means. Yet embarrassment is actually a wonderful thing, signaling that something very strange or very significant is going on. Without embarrassment, kids are weaker: more vulnerable to pregnancy, disease, and heartbreak."
Writing in the same issue of City Journal, Shalit insists that sex education has merely exacerbated the problems it was supposed to correct. "Most studies find that knowledge about AIDS or HIV does not decrease risky behavior," she reports. "The few studies that do demonstrate that sex education changes the behavior of students conclude it is only likely to make them more sexually active." Shalit offers an explanation for "why so many kids are getting pregnant these days, now that we have so much sex education on top of a wholly sexualized culture. It's because sex is not a big deal to them," she contends, "and because they think this is what they are expected to do." Children don't need an introduction to sexual mechanics; they need guidance. "Sex education failed," says Shalit, "because it got the reality exactly backward: in fact, students are smart and already know how it's done. When young, they look to adults . . . to know what it all means, where it all is leading: that is, they want to know from adults how not to do it."
Teachers should teach history, but they don't. Teachers should not offer how-to instruction in the fundamentals of fornication, but they do. Teachers will keep on neglecting their legitmate duties and asserting bogus prerogatives until enough taxpayers demand that they stop. So, what are you waiting for?
