Mass. elementary school district will provide first graders with condoms! Not a joke!

Parent Cafe
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<p>waste of resources. what if a bunch of little kids come and take all the condoms to make water balloons, and then some older studnets who genuinely need them come by and have to wait until they are restocked. even though condoms are cheaped, notoriously slow bookkeeping and bureaucracy could mean that they would be out of stock for an unncessarily long time.</p>

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<p>And the defeatism exposited by the so-called “parents” in certain communities are part of what facilitates harmful sexuality and negative attitudes surrounding and perceiving about sex.</p>

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<p>Well…duh. </p>

<p>Sorry, but by 13/14 year olds, I meant kids at the very beginning of puberty, not they just “suddenly start as soon as they turn 13.”</p>

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<p>Rixs…not sure I understand your attempt at clarification in post 22. </p>

<p>You had said originally in post 15 that SO MANY kids are having sex around age 13 and 14. But you also said that elem school was too early to be needing condoms, right? </p>

<p>In my view, most in elem school likely do not need condoms. But going by your assertion that so many have sex around age 13, it would not be far fetched then, that a few kids have sex at age 12 while in elementary school because it wouldn’t be like nobody has sex at 12 and then SO many have it at 13. I would expect a gradual increase in sexual activity by every year. </p>

<p>(frankly, I’m not so sure “SO MANY” have sex at 13 either but just going by what you assert)</p>

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<p>Sensationalism at its best. The real policy is there is no age limit. So someone takes it to the extreme and points out what is ‘possible’. Oh the horror!</p>

<p>They are not passing out condoms. They are very most likely not advertising to young kids ‘hey if you need a free condom come on by’. It’s most simply that the policy doesn’t specify an age limit (which frankly makes sense to me- what is the point otherwise…if a kid is having sex at whatever age- I would rather they have access to a condom than not and how are we supposed to be knowing in advance what that age should/is? so if you are 12, forget it! but 13, okay you are entitled to protection). Do I personally think this is healthy for young people to be having sex? Of course not but that isn’t the issue: the issue is protecting young people who might be.</p>

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<p>starbright, I agree. An age limit doesn’t really make sense (yes, if 13, no if 12). So, condoms should be available to all. </p>

<p>That said, while I have no statistics to go by, I just don’t think that many kids in K-6 (under 12) are having sex (though I suppose if just one child is, that child does need protection). Many haven’t reached puberty. Then again, anything is possible and it sure seems like kids have sex younger and younger these days. I don’t think they really needed this policy but I don’t have a problem with it. And it is a community that is attuned to issues about sexuality and sexual diseases and so on. </p>

<p>I think the twist on “first graders” was unfortunate and an attempt at sensationalism to misinterpret the intent of the policy.</p>

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<p>This is an interesting article I just read. It seems that when this new policy was under consideration and also when it was passed, there were NO objections. It only became an issue today when it hit the national media and the slant about “first graders being given condoms” emerged. So now, they have to revise the policy!</p>

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<p>This is an excerpt but the article gives an interesting chronology of events today!</p>

<p><a href=“http://www.foxnews.com/us/2010/06/24/condoms-kids-provincetown-protest-bad-day/[/url]”>http://www.foxnews.com/us/2010/06/24/condoms-kids-provincetown-protest-bad-day/&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;

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<p>What the heck does this mean? I don’t feel “defeatist”. I am militant and positive about the need to discuss sexuality with my kids – in appropriate doses at appropriate ages, but starting very young. And now that they are past being kids, I am perfectly satisfied with the results. (They have spent time in Provincetown every year of their lives, too. Love the penny candy, malassadas, Army-Navy store, Rice-Polak Gallery, AND the drag queens.)</p>

<p>From my standpoint, the problem is with maroons like the crew at Fox News and the Massachusetts Family Institute. What a bunch of wantonly destructive people!</p>

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<p>It’s interesting. My initial reaction was basically “ahhh! What the heck?” and gradually evolved into a calmer outlook on everything. So thank you guys for posting the context (of the place, etc.), your views, and overlooked details of the story.</p>

<p>I agree. News is much more exciting when naive five-year-olds are encouraged to have sex with free condoms than if, eh…schools allow the option of a condom w/ permission to elementary school students.</p>

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This is a very logical and very well articulated analysis of the situation. </p>

<p>However, I still choose to believe that we are now living in a… Brave New World.</p>

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<p>^^^^</p>

<p>Not so new . . .</p>

<p>In 1970 I was a day camp counselor and we were warned to watch for sexual behavior among our campers who went up to kids who had just completed 6th grade. We laughed at that. The camp director told us not to laugh . . . there had been several pregnancies in the 6th grade at a local school that year and they wanted to prevent that happening at camp. (Apparently, the kids were using saran wrap as condoms . . . didn’t work so well.)</p>

<p>As a recent high school graduate who had not even contemplated having sex at that point, I was shocked!! (as were most of my counselor colleagues)</p>

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<p>In our community we have a school specifically for pregnant teens or ones who have had their babies already and need to take them to school. One of the teachers is a friend of mine and he has a 16 year old on her third, yes third pregnancy. Apparently she is encouraged to NOT use a condom for welfare reasons.</p>

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<p>This is an example of pure Big Lie propaganda with no basis in fact in the past 15 years (and scant basis before that). No one, but no one, has children to get welfare. Many, many young women have children because their churches tell them using birth control or terminating a pregnancy is a sin. Of course, their churches tell them having sex outside of marriage is a sin, too, but that works about as well as it ever has.</p>

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<p>i didn’t think 1st graders would be physically capable of using one…nor have the physical necessity…
since when could 1st graders spread their seed?</p>

<p>why are they stocking condoms at elementary schools?</p>

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<p>The idea that people have children to get welfare is countered by the right-wing argument that poor women, particularly black women, get too many abortions. Note the Atlanta area billboards talking about a holocaust caused by aborting black babies. You can’t argue both sides.</p>

<p>As for Provincetown, a little more perspective. I hit on people in the Politics forum all the time for not taking 2 minutes to look things up, for posting untrue garbage that is easily debunked.* So take a look at the actual Provincetown schools. Take the 2 minutes. There have been 2, only 2, because Ptown is small. They’re actually planning to shut the high school and send the kinds to a regional school because enrollment has dropped as the blue collar year round population has shrunk. The other school is K-8, just like my “elementary school” in my MA town. In blunt terms, take a few minutes to look up something you find not only did the news story invent the 1st grader part - as I noted in an earlier post - but that the age limits apply to a K-8 school. Does anyone think that 7th and 8th graders aren’t sexually active? In Ptown, like my district, they subdivide their school into an elementary and middle school portion, sometimes with an assistant principal in charge of the latter, but it’s all one “elementary school” in one building. My kids went to Driscoll School, an elementary school, from K-8 and then to high school. </p>

<p>*An easy example is a FoxNews story about the closing of part of a wildlife preserve on the AZ border because of violence that took only looking up the wildlife preserve’s homepage to see this happened in 2006 and that they say violence has decreased since then.</p>

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<p>Because there ARE no “elementary schools”. They have ONE 7-12 school (with ~100 students total) and ONE k-6 school (with <100 students) next door. There’s no way they have separate nurses.</p>

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<p>JHS: this is what the kid told her teacher. Personally, I don’t know the child.</p>

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<p>Mass. apparently decided that 6 years of age is a proper age for start having sex. We have to listen to our superior elected officials. After all, we elected them ourselves, nobody forced us to do so. So, we deserve what we willingly voted for.</p>

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<p>MiamiDAP, are you being a ■■■■■, or do you have severe reading comprehension problems, or have you simply not bothered to read anything about this? Or maybe you don’t understand the difference between a local school board in a tiny district and the state? Or the difference between saying nothing (because it didn’t occur to anyone that they had to say anything) and “decid[ing] that 6 years of age is a proper age for start [sic] having sex”?</p>

<p>Really, there is no excuse for that post. None.</p>

<p>(I don’t know why Fox and its minions are so hung-up on 6 year-olds. As I understand the policy and the school district, it applied to pre-kindergartners as well.)</p>

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<p>^lol. I suppose any younger and people would be scratching their heads instead of reeling in alarm.</p>

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<p>Lerg - you have nailed this one. </p>

<p>But I don’t understand school politics. Ok, the media flubbed this. And that is hardly unique, as you point out. But why doesn’t the school simply state that while the policy sets no age limits they cannot imagine a circumstance where condoms would be distributed to any child in the lower grades? And further, why don’t they support their people? They could also state that their nursing and counseling staff (as small as it might be) consists of a cadre of trained professionals who certainly are aware of what it means to be age appropriate and professional when dealing with personal issues with children and their families. I would want my bosses to treat me that way. As wrong as the press is here, the school could deal with this pretty easily, don’t you think? I am perplexed as to why they don’t engage in practical terms. The people banging the drum here happen to be wrong, and they could simply say so without making them appear 10 foot tall.</p>