I graduated from high school in 1988, and even in my conservative state, we weren't stuck with "abstinence education". Our 1980's textbooks covered birth control and sex ed. I'd rather have those "out of date" textbooks than the new "abstinence only" textbooks used at my former high school today.

finally, sense. i have many children and i'm glad that both male and female know how to protect themslves against unwanted pregnancy by engaging in safe sex. thank God for public education and the wonderful teachers that help to guide our, my, chldren into a safe, succesful adulthood.

when conformitity to an idea is enforced by ideology and culture amd doesn't have any evidence to back it up, once there's a crack in the enforced phony consensus the whole thing can fall apart.

I've heard of some schools that also educate students about the cost of raising a child. This might prove a real eye-opener for teens. An allowance and a part-time job may help pay for your clothes but won't stretch that far with an infant or toddler.

For that matter, has math? Like Karen, I graduated from high school in the 80's (way before 88) and we learned all about birth control, std's and even had reps from Planned Parenthood come in and talk to us. Sure, there are new std's and birth control options, but I don't think the books are the problem!

So who gets to pay the price for political ideology?

Just the 65 girls?

I hope that school system bends over backwards to ensure those girls finish school.

It's not only the ethical thing, it's the moral thing.

And "morality" is what lay at the bottom of this to begin with, right?

It's about time! Hopefully, it will spread beyond Ohio and to places like Mississippi.

I mean, other than the sheer numbers...apparently those girls get no sex ed at home, either. And...mothers between the ages of 11 and 19. ELEVEN? Oy.

Do you suppose they have a daycare center at the high school, now?

The math and sex teenagers need to hear about, anyway.

I've completed 70 graduate math courses with something more than a 3.95 GPA, and still, in many areas of mathematics, I'm 350 years behind. I can barely duplicate Newton's proof (in simpler, more modern language) that Kepler's laws and the gravitation law imply one another. It's a humbling realization.

The Timkin High sports teams are know as the "Trojans."

Perhaps a corporate sponsorship should be arranged...

I agree that a corporate sponsorship might help and the sponsor should be the corrupt Republicans at DIEBOLD Corp.

Then who will teach those idiots at DIEBOLD about corporate ethics so they can unlearn Republican ethics which is to say almost no ethics at all, but I'll bet they got lots of religion. Republicans ethics though almost nonexistent include 'Let's make a buck no matter what damage we do to America just as long as our electronic voting machines keep the Republican party in power, America be damned, we're making money'.

So much for Diebold and Republican ethics.

And then America also has ES&S electronic voting machines whose CEO was Chuck Hagel(R-Neb). I'll bet Hagel has lots of religion, fundamentalist religion full of hate and intolerance.

And I'm not even a Democrat.

This would be funny if it weren't so sad.

mcb, please enlighten me to what these new stds are since 1988.

Since AIDS was first noticed in 1981 what else is new? Its the only one I can think of.

Only reason I'm bringing this up (I admit, a little snarkily) is because recently my sister was lamenting about "all these new diseases" as to why everyone should be abstinent until marriage and its something you hear elsewhere as well, everytime someone is talking about infidelity, teen sex or whatever on online forums.

Pretty much all the ones I know about have always existed as far as medical science has been around. They just might be named differently now, like HPV used to be called just genital warts. But they sure as heck aren't new!

Have 65 statutory-rape cases been filed in court?

How many of the 65 children (or more, allowing for twins etc.) will be adopted by the powers-that-be in the school system?

...is the school system.

So I guess everyone in Ohio is getting screwed.

At least in California, there's a fun little situation that comes up on the topic.

First, you cannot discuss certain sexual topics except in certain classes (e.g. science class) and, even then, need parental notification and all that stuff.

The textbook publishers help in a subtle way: they put the sex ed materials (the meager content that IS allowed) at the end of the course. A teacher can easily skip it, saying that there wasn't time to cover it, and it IS the end of the course.

It's sort of a quiet way for the teacher to cover his/her butt ("it IS in the text") while not upsetting parents ("if I say 'penis' in the classroom, I'll get calls from parents").

I suppose many of you will find this community interesting. It seems to sexually educate a number of people, many very young: www.livejournal.com/community/sextips

I'm not the person who originally posted the comment, so I'm not trying to put words in his or her mouth, but I will say this: while there may or may not technically be "new" STDs since 1988 (I honestly don't know one way or the other, although it wouldn't surprise me), there are certainly new and more virulent strains of existing diseases that are increasingly resistant to treatment. Even back in the 1960s, people who got timely treatment for gonorrhea, say, didn't typically die from it. They may now.

The names may be the same as they were twenty years ago, but the implications of contracting many STDS grow more and more potentially devastating. That in itself would seem like reason enough for updating curricula to 21st Century standards, for whatever that's worth.

Several comments/letters have been that sex hasn't changed much since 1988 but STDs and medical research has!

Since 1988, we have:

more and accurate information on AIDS and HIV

a vaccine for HPV

better information on condoms, what to use with them or not

definitive scientific information that disproves many of the "theories" and "truths" that anti-choice groups put out there such as abortion causes breast cancer and that using condoms is "playing Russian Roullette"

While new textbooks would be great -- as long as they are scientifically accurate -- any book that is scientifically accurate that talks about how a person gets pregnant, how to prevent the spread of STDs, and how to prevent pregnancies is good! Plus the different exercises encouraging kids to talk to their parents, learn their ethics and morals, and what they have to consider when having kids. There are lots of girls out there who think that a baby will give them unconditional love and will make their lives better. The family financial planning things we did in high school sex ed really opened my eyes. You really have no idea how much just having a baby is going to cost until you plan on having (or have) a baby.