Who's Ready for Some Catholic Sex Education?
I have , on a couple of occasions , told war stories about sex ed in a Catholic high school in the South in the middle 90s. What is interesting to me about that program, looking back with the benefit of adulthood and hindsight, is the way in which it balanced (or, really, attempted to balance) two entirely different sets of objectives. On the one hand, you had what you might call the "Catholic objectives"--don't have pre-marital sex, don't use birth control, abortion is the worst thing ever, maybe if we don't talk about gay people they will just go away, etc. But, at the same time, it was also trying to communicate what you might call "ambitious middle class objectives," which focused on the message "if you have to raise a child before you are financially secure/fully educated, your life will be over." To that end, the big senior year religion project was that you partnered up with a classmate (of the opposite gender, natch) and had to tak...