It always irritates me that sex-ed is even made part of curriculums at the level it is. In my school, it was 5th and 6th grade, for crying out loud! (Age 11/12 for you non-US peeps.)

That said, I'm an old bastard, and today we're hearing of 10-year-olds and early teens getting knocked up, so maybe it is time we embraced the fact that parenting is apparently becoming a lost art.

Now Ender, don't discriminate and judge people who have different beliefs than you. After all, being underage, single, and with a child provides lots of welfare money. It's a form of "investment"!

I'm not sure teenage guys need any educating about how to masturbate, but its illegal for girls to buy vibrators before the age of 18 and maybe something should be done about that. I really don't see the harm.

I'd rather the curriculum taught kids about sex than me have to talk to my child about it. I'm really glad to have got it in a sterile place like school and not had to bear hearing my parents try to say anything about it. I just don't think parents and sex lives should mix, at all.

Waiting until people are sexually active to start educating them on STDs and pregnancy is kinda like vaccinating after people are exposed to a disease. You're supposed to do it beforehand, it doesn't work otherwise. You don't start early because of kids getting knocked up, you start it then precisely because they should be too young and you need to get to them before they have the chance to get pregnant.

Squee, what do you think of my idea for forced sterilization of 'undesirables' at an early age? It would reduce so many problems for society!

Now that, I cannot agree with. No, parents should not be discussing favorite positions and (ahem) marital aids with their kids, but basic "this is how babies are made, and this is why you shouldn't be making babies of your own until you're old enough to deal with the consequences" is pretty much a sina qua non of parenting.

Instead, parents are letting the schools and the Springer Culture on television tell their kids about sex, and then wondering why little Jane's "heavy with child" at age fourteen.

"Abstinence-only" education is equally ignorant. Fun fact: teenage pregnancy rates --abortion rates, too-- in the US are highest in the South.

Basically, the schools, churches, and parents ALL have a role in helping kids find their way from larvae to adult, and fail in that responsibility when they lean too wrong in some predetermined direction. Kids are kids, they WILL experiment, and they're predisposed to thinking the adults are full of shit. So, instead of treating them like children and subjecting them to rigid demands, we should instead recognize that they'll sooner or later be needing to fend for themselves, and treat them as budding adults, giving them the information they need to make informed, responsible decisions about how to handle their sexuality.

Oh, and when I say "parents are letting the schools tell their kids about sex", I mean both the schoolyard and the actual faculty, who these days are under so much fire no matter which direction they try to teach (abstinence-only or full sex-ed) that their teaching has gotten intellectually schizophrenic.

All the more reason for parents to fill that gap.

I don't want to be relying on ass backwards parents to be preventing their kids from getting knocked up and creating more unwanted teenage pregnancies. Kids need to know about this stuff, it's as basic as maths and languages, there's not reason not to teach it. If the parents want to add input too, great, just means more learning for the kids.

Teenage pregnancy is a huge problem in my home town. I don't think any amount of sex ed is going to fix it, unfortunately. The kids don't care and just laugh about it. It's really about changing a whole ideal. Their parents did it, they do it. We had basic education on it, abstinence only talks, protection talks, std talks etc. It really didn't stop much of anything for more than maybe the week after they had it. This is a community problem that schooling alone will not fix.

If you live in one of these towns you come to see that although they gossip and whisper behind the pregnant girl's back. It's not totally unacceptable. It's not so much as proper sex isn't taught as it is that consequence and responsibility in all aspects of life isn't taught. These kids don't want to take responsibility for any of their actions or problems and they get that attitude from their parents. It translates into a lot of different social issues. Pregnancies, divorces, job loss. When you are dealing with a subculture that says "well I couldn't help it, I just couldn't, they wouldn't let me, he made me, and every other excuse" then you get kids who fail because they refuse to learn from any mistake because nothing could possibly be their own fault.

I would like to point out that so far I'm the oldest of 5 children 4 girls and a boy and we all graduated high school with out getting pregnant, I didn't have children until I was 27, and as of yet I am still not an aunt myself. Self discipline and consequence can be taught and learned.

"subculture that says "well I couldn't help it, I just couldn't, they wouldn't let me, he made me, and every other excuse"

You're describing a dangerous part of human nature: not taking responsibility, aka blaming others.

The psychology of it was a major contributor to the holocaust. Germans blamed Jews, instead of taking responsibility for their own actions.