One question we here at Metro Pulse had last week, as we were examining the controversy surrounding Planned Parenthood teaching sex education in Knox County schools, is what actually was in the curriculum itself. We weren't able to get our hands on it by press time, but now Planned Parenthood of Middle and East Tennessee has put it their website for all to see.
However, we did find ourselves fascinated by the Mad Men-esque activity that has a group of students pretend to be an ad agency coming up with a commercial for a contraceptive. If only Peggy Olson had been so lucky...
We haven't had time to read the whole thing in depth yet, because, come on, that weather this weekend? Like you'd want to be in front of a computer either. (Although some folks seemingly did spend a lot of time indoors, given all the new posts on the pro- and anti- Planned Parenthood Facebook groups this weekend.) But we were struck by, well, how earnestly awkward the curriculum seems.
It's been more than a couple of years since we were sophomores in high school, and though we've tried to erase those years from our minds, it hasn't been completely successful. So we can pretty easily imagine how a classroom of teens might tune out such activities as beading a necklace to reflect the different stages of the menstrual cycle or writing a letter to a family member explaining that you are HIV positive - especially when 33 percent of those students already had sex in the ninth grade, according to the Knox County Health Department's 2009 Youth Risk Behavior Survey. (That stat's on page 98 of the document, by the way.) And a menustrual cycle coloring worksheet? For 16-year-olds? Really? We cringe on behalf of you poor Knox County students who have actually had to color this.
However, we did find ourselves fascinated by the Mad Men-esque activity that has a group of students pretend to be an ad agency coming up with a commercial for a contraceptive. If only Peggy Olson had been so lucky...
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