LogFAQs > #974976614

ParanoidObsessive posted...

The main problem there would seem to be that a full-length class each year would feel excessive (and would take time away from other potential classes, so prioritizing becomes an issue). But if you just do it as a short class (say, as an alternative class that only lasts for a few weeks or a full quarter/half-semester) it runs the risk of feeling less important, and kids may not internalize or retain what you teach. The best scenario might be to have a general "health and lifestyle" sort of class that deals with sex ed but also includes other elements that are sorely neglected by most modern education (like critical thinking, finances, and so on). So you space the sex ed lessons out between other lessons, and help socialize students better in other aspects of their life as well.

It's a tricky balance, but fortunately, it's a balance that's already been struck in many curricula that some school boards are trying to implement, which have been tested extensively and found to yield better sexual health outcomes without compromising any other learning.

ParanoidObsessive posted...

Though like you pointed out, you'd have to avoid the ideological pitfalls where parents feel like you're indoctrinating as opposed to just presenting straight facts and science. Because that's where the usual pushback comes (and in some cases, it's not even entirely unwarranted).

The notion that school is all "straight facts and science" is fundamentally ridiculous in the first place. Those complaining about school teaching too much subjective stuff aren't actually complaining about opinions being taught so much as they're complaining about opinions with which they don't agree being taught.

More than that, in most cases, the problem they have with sex ed isn't that the stuff being taught is too subjective, it's that it isn't subjective enough. "These are the odds of getting pregnant with X/Y/Z birth control options," "these STD's exist," "sexual orientation and gender identity can vary from person to person" and other things like that are all 100% factual. The people freaking out are freaking out because something other than "sex is bad" and "gay people are evil" is being taught. They don't want kids to be taught the factual realities of sex and whatnot because that doesn't adequately convince kids that sex is evil and they'll go to hell if they do it before getting married. There are subjective elements, like "consent is important" and "you should respect people who are different," but those are opinions that are well-grounded in factual realities (namely, "rape traumatizes people" and "accepting trans people makes them less likely to kill themselves"), so conflicting opinions with no such basis are objectively inferior and should be laughed at until the person holding them cries.

ParanoidObsessive posted...

People tend to regret when good family members die, if those relationships have decayed to the point where it feels like opportunities were lost or things could have ended on a better note. But if the family member in question is a terrible person and it feels like there is literally no interest in redemption or compromise on their part, then regret really doesn't come into it. If anything, the survivor is more likely to feel apathy or even relief more than regret. The family member isn't someone worth missing or remembering, they're a burden and an ordeal which has suddenly been removed and which is best left behind.

Constantly telling people they should be obligated to abusive or neglectful parents forever is actually a far more psychologically damaging phenomenon than any possible regret those people might feel later.

Indeed. I can actually say that, now that I'm older, I'm less sad about my dad's parents dying than I was at the time. They were both pretty abusive to him in some very unpleasant ways (not as bad as my mom's mother was to her), and learning more about that as an adult (it wasn't really something that was discussed at the time and is more coming out as my mother works through the abuse she suffered from her mother and compares it with what she knew of my dad's treatment) is helping me understand the complex relationship my dad had with their deaths (including the last ~5 years of my grandmother's life where she was in full-time care following several strokes and he'd get a migraine any time he considered going to visit her). I wouldn't necessarily say I'm glad they're dead, but I do think it was actually good for my dad to get away from that, a benefit that outweighs the downside of me just being sad that grandad was gone.

And then with my mom's mother, I was pretty upset when she had a major cancer scare when I was like 17-18, but I was genuinely glad when she died a few years back (when I was 30). Part of that was that she was an absolutely miserable person who was too depressed to do anything to change that and instead just wallowed in her suffering for the last decade of her life (and probably quite a bit longer than that, though it got much more pronounced later), but the other part was that she was absolutely horrible and abusive to my mom and her death was an opportunity for my mom to move past the sense of obligation and guilt that compelled her to try and seek her approval. Getting older did change my perspective, entirely as a matter of being able to look past the fun times I had with my grandmother as a kid and recognize the unrepentant harm she was causing.

Sometimes, yes, getting older can change your perspective as you get some distance from whatever was bothering you and you realize that it was never worth compromising your relationship over. That's not the case for abuse. Abuse only gets better when the abusers make a genuine effort to repent. Victims have zero responsibility in that reconciliation process, and any efforts to make them feel guilty for failing to reconcile with a dead abuser (whether external or internal) should be shut down.