April 1, 2007 6:05 AM

So, how 'bout doing your job as a parent instead of whining about the injustice of it all

Parents Protest H.S. Sex Newspaper

HAMPTON, N.H. ‚Äö√Ñ√Æ Some parents are protesting the “sex” edition of the student newspaper at Winnacunnet High School. Several said they were especially offended by a photograph of two women kissing under the headline, “Why men love women who love women,” a quiz question about anal sex, and an interview with an unnamed custodian who said he had found a vibrator in the girls’ shower….”Those articles offended me personally as a parent,” said Venus Merrill, a school board member. “It’s not something you want to read with your 10-year-old and it’s not something that should be going home.”

Here’s a news flash: we live in a sex-saturated society. Yeah, I know…what a shock, eh? Given the degree to which the American media uses sex to sell…well, ANYTHING…none of us can reasonably claim to be surprised when our children want to get in on the discussion. After sex is mysterious, it’s fun, and it’s one of the most basic parts of our humanity.

There is, of course, a drawback with the reality that our children are exposed to so much sex. Too often, they’re placed in a position in which they’re dealing with issues that they have neither the maturity nor the wherewithal to process. This is where we as parents come in. If we’re willing to do the jobs we signed on to do when little Johnny came into the world, we’d be educating them on sexual issues and helping them to come to grips with issues of sex and sexuality. Instead of whining about the Winnachronicle, we’d be trying to figure out why our children feel the need to have this sort of discussion in a school newspaper.

Yes, perhaps school administrators dropped the ball here by allowing the Winnachronicle to be printed without editorial oversight- they are, after all, acting in loco parentis. This isn’t necessarily the sole responsibility of teachers and administrators, though. Parents also have a role to play here- the biggest role, actually, since they’re supposed to be the authority figures and role models in the lives of their children. If parents model responsible sexual behavior, if they discuss issues of sex and sexuality open and candidly with their children, if they don’t act as if sex is dirty and something to be ashamed of, perhaps this sort of thing doesn’t happen.

Then again, it’s often easier for parents to piss and moan about how the schools aren’t doing the job they’re supposed to. With so many adults so conflicted and hung up about sex, we can’t really expecting them to own up to that, can we? Of course not; it’s MUCH easier to blame the teachers and administrators. After all, who wants to take responsibility for their shortcomings, hangups, or moral conflicts?

The student paper’s editor in chief, Katie McCay, and managing editor, Lisa McManus, said they wanted to educate students, nearly half of whom are already having sexual intercourse, according to a 2005 Youth Risk Behavior Survey at the high school. The true or false quiz was particularly enlightening, they said.

“As we put the pages on the table, the staff said, ‘Oh my goodness, that’s false? I had no idea,’” McCay said. “This is definitely stuff kids didn’t know about.”

The reason that kids don’t know about this stuff is that THEIR PARENTS AREN’T TEACHING THEM, not because schools aren’t doing their job. Sexuality is not a subject to be delegated to schools because parents are too squeamish and uncomfortable to talk about it. If parents cannot or will not teach their children about it, then they should accept that they’re derelict in their duties and forfeiting their responsibility as parents. This being the case, a parent loses their right to piss and moan about what a school is teaching their children.

They also got a lot of feedback about the article on lesbians, she said.

“We thought it was an important topic to address,” McCay said. “Being in a high school, it’s something I’ve seen and something other kids have seen in the hallways.”

In an editorial, McManus wrote that the students were aware they were dealing with a taboo.

“These stories have been edited and re-edited for content and delivery, keeping in mind that the job here is to inform, not shock,” the editorial said. “It’s about sex. Deal with it. …

“It is something parents hope their children remain ignorant about until after marriage. It is something faculty members and administrators hope not to deal with, but something that almost all students have experienced or been exposed to.”

If parents cannot find it within themselves to open, frankly, and honestly discuss sex and sexuality with their children, they can hardly claim to be surprised when their children act out in ways that may be considered inappropriate. The Winnachronicle was simply a way to do something that parents should have been doing themselves.

Sex is not an easy topic to discuss. I’m sure that most of us can remember when we first had “the talk” with our parents. My dad took me grouse hunting, and had “the talk” with me as we walked through the woods one cold late October afternoon. When we got home, my mother handed me a copy of Everything You Wanted To Know About Sex But Were Afraid To Ask. She asked me to read the book and then ask if I had any questions. That was pretty much the end of my home-based sexual education. I was 12 years old, and completely unprepared to process what I was suddenly exposed to. I don’t blame my parents for the somewhat ham-handed way in which the subject of my sexual education was handled. I imagine it was a stressful and extremely uncomfortable situation for them. My question then, as it is now, is why this needs to be the case?

As a society, we’re so wrapped up in our “sex-is-dirty” puritan ethic that we often inadvertently sentence our children to a lifetime of the same sort of shame. The Winnachronicle was merely an attempt by children to help educate their peers and remove the veil of ignorance when it comes to sex and sexuality. We may not like that this sort of thing happens, but perhaps if we did our jobs as parents, things like the Winnachronicle wouldn’t be necessary.

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This page contains a single entry by Jack Cluth published on April 1, 2007 6:05 AM.

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