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    Blasted Out of Innocence (Sex Ed in the Early Ages)

    Filed Under current affairs, education, health, heteropatriarchy, media, people, uuism 

    If you haven’t seen it already, the UU Reverend Debra Haffner’s appeared on the O’Reilly Factor several days ago to talk about sex education in the primary grades. O’Reilly stated that he disagreed with Haffner about the appropriateness of teaching kindergarten age children a word like “uterus.” Doing so would be “blasting” them out of their childhoods.

    Now I disagree with O’Reilly on this point. I don’t think uterus is somehow more dangerous than a word like “kidney” or “mind.” Even if it goes over a child’s head, they aren’t somehow scarred for having heard it.

    But that’s just my opinion, and one opinion is as good as another. O’Reilly didn’t oppose the use of the word uterus on principle; his concern was that it was harmful to young children to be exposed to that level of specificity. The good news for all of us is that such an opinion can be put to the test. And while O’Reilly didn’t ask for this, it would have been great if Rev. Haffner had responded to his fears with the results of studies that looked at whether such “sophisticated” language harmed young children.

    I don’t know if there are any such studies, but surely some work has been done to determine what is “age appropriate” and why. If evidence suggests that young children are actually helped by having that kind of vocabulary, and O’Reilly was informed of this, perhaps he’d have no problem with it.

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    One Response to “Blasted Out of Innocence (Sex Ed in the Early Ages)”

    1. AintKatie on July 21st, 2007 5:33 pm

      “I don’t think uterus is somehow more dangerous than a word like “kidney” or “mind.” Even if it goes over a child’s head, they aren’t somehow scarred for having heard it.”

      One of my nearly life-long peeves has been that ALL the parts of my body cannot be refered to in “common” terms..like arm, leg, nose, eyes. Why are the parts associated with urination, defecation, procreation, reproduction referred to in medical/Latin terms or babytalk euphemisms? I would imagine BillO wouldn’t be so worried about a child’s loss of innocence if the sex educators used terms like popo, peepee, and poopoo.

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