while we were living in a dream world, clouds got in the way

Monday morning: As I write journal assignments on Ye Olde Chalk Board, teenagers walk by in the hall eagerly discussing their weekend carousing. I sit at my desk for a minute to scan the local newspaper for the small town I teach in. A front page article details the misadventures of a school board member who was the lone vote against implementing the Worth the Wait abstinence education program in our district. Apparently, he wants to preserve the “innocence of hundreds of kiddos” by not having any sex education at all. I recall taking up a note from a student in which she bemoaned the difficulty of “get[ing] ‘er done” when her boyfriend was a virgin. I have to say, this school board member may not actually have been in a school in a while.

Not that I’m all that crazy about Worth the Wait. My own sixth-grade son attends a school that has implemented the curriculum, and I have mixed feelings about that. But my objections to Worth the Wait stem from the program’s fantastical abstinence-only message. In the county where I teach—where eighth-graders are sexually active and many seniors have two children—Worth the Wait struggles to close the barn door when the horse is several hundred miles away, partying like a Las Vegas hooker.

So I guess we’re all living in a dream world. School board members imagine that their sixth graders are innocent young babes frolicking with talking vegetables on a green green playground. I happily fantasize that fundies may someday accept reality-based education. The quaint old Age of Reason dream of liberal democracy would maintain therefore that the compromise, midway position of the Worth the Wait program is the Best of All Possible Worlds. Is it?

SPACEDARK