What Are You Teaching My Child?

Dr. Miriam Grossman has a new book called You’re Teaching My Child What? This book is useful reading for parents because she explains what so-called “comprehensive” sex education really means. One out of four teenage girls now has a sexually transmitted infection, so Dr. Grossman’s exposé of school sex education is very important.

She points out that school instructors and sex-ed materials tell students to go to websites such as “Go Ask Alice.” On that website, teens are told that “The only way to be 100% certain you don’t get any [sexually transmitted] infections" is not to have any kind of sex (and she was very specific about the kinds of sex), but “Alice” reassures anxious teens that “Most people eventually decide to take the plunge and explore the joys of sex.” The website called “Go Ask Alice” presents teens with only two alternatives: dreary lifelong celibacy, or “taking the plunge” and risking some viruses that are mildly inconvenient and supposedly everyone gets eventually, anyway. Teens are told, “Just remember that almost everyone gets HPV at some time."

Dr. Grossman says children should be taught “the medically accurate message that all sexually transmitted infections, and the anguish that accompanies them, are 100% avoidable.” Teens should wait to have sex, find someone who also waited, and then be faithful. In today’s sex ed classes, students don't learn about this alternative, or about the trauma that even the mildest of the two dozen widespread sexually transmitted diseases can cause.

The material in this book is disturbing, but Dr. Grossman is just reporting what teens are routinely subjected to in public schools. She conclusively proves that Planned Parenthood and the leading sex ed organizations present students with a view of sex that is not in teenagers’ best interests.

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