The other day during a conversation, a friend of mine made a comment that got my wheels spinning. The comment was in regard to her personal theory, relating to why our public education systems were not effective enough, or as they originally sought out to be–specifically when it came to Sex Education and Drug Prevention.
The statement was something like this:
“Education is virtually useless; kids are
‘going to do what they were going to do’…”
I have to say, I respectfully disagreed. (at first)
“Education is the key!” I thought…
However, when this assumption is made, that ‘education is key’, it seems it is always made based on key elements that are not present in the types of students that they are attempting to educate.
If you are educating high school students who already have a foundation laid, this information could prove to be very effective and helpful.
It would only compliment the factual information that they already feel pretty confident of.
These kinds of students have somewhat of an idea of who they are (or are well on their way in navigating that road),
how important and valuable they are and why this education is so imperative and applicable.
They might have a better understanding of how this information can help them to achieve their personal goals, and to have the best chances of living a healthy, balanced, and fruitful lifestyle in the duration of their young adolescent life and well beyond.
If you are attempting to force a group of teens who aren’t as confident with who they are, don’t care if they are valuable or not, and don’t take any adult authority seriously- it is highly likely that you could be wasting your time and taxpayer money. So I guess I don’t think that this type of education would be effective in prevention efforts in this kind of setting.
So, what then?
I don’t have magical answers.
This is a blog. I have opinions, not answers to life’s hardest questions.
No matter where you fall in the category…
whether you completely oppose public education systems,
you love public schools, or you think home-schooling is for the birds-
the only thing that I know with 100% certainty and the only fact that will undoubtedly withstand all arguments-
is that it is first the parents (or main caregiver’s) responsibility to ‘educate’ their young own people.
Parents!
It is OUR job to fill our children’s head and their hearts with truth.
They need to know the truth about who they are, why they are SO valuable, how loved they are, and WHY the prevention education is so important.
For their protection.
So, I agree to an extent.
Education is not the key, well- not the only one anyway.
It’s like a key on a key ring that should be a key set.
Prevention education is not meant to be the only education, it is suppose to compliment the ‘ideal’ foundation that is already laid.
It is an extra, an added bonus.
This, in my opinion, is why ‘Education doesn’t work’
and ‘kids are just going to do what they are going to do’…
But who knows? Maybe the things that they hear in the classroom for that block of time will have some sort of an effect on the choices that they make later on in that day or somewhere down the line.
Maybe that is what the department of education is hoping for.
Maybe there needs to be a general, seculararly agreed upon prerequisite class that is required before the completion of the Sex Ed and Drug Prevention education?
Like a “Why YOU Matter”
a young male/female “Empowerment” class…
An “Understanding Your Unique Role” class…
I could think of hundreds of different types of ways to implement this type of curriculum.
No matter what type of prevention education you support or think is the ‘best’ or the ‘correct’ way to present our young people with information—-
Only people who value themselves give a damn about protecting themselves from any kind of harm.