In answer to your question about when Americans get sex ed, in my school in Oregon about 35 years ago we got our first human reproduction segment in the 7th grade. That's about 12 or 13. It was covered again in the eighth grade and in both of the two semesters of health classes we were required to take in highschool.

Of course I didn't go to school in Tenessee or Alabama, or Missisippi or any of the other national leaders in teen pregnancy, all or which are red states.

Hopefully all parents provide moral guidance to their children - preferably by example. However there are many areas where parents should rely on professionals to help them provide the best possible outcome for the maturation of their child. If a child has pneumonia, it is the moral responsibility of the parent (and society) to provide the services of health care professionals. Following the logic (or illogic) of his statement Rep John Duncan must also feel that the use of a medical Doctor would be elitist as they would know better than a non-medically parent how to treat illnesses. From applied scientific work, medical doctors know what works and what does not work. In curing their patients, they use methods that work. It is this same scientific method that has shown that abstinence only sex education does not work.

He's saying that no amount of education or intelligence entitles you to impose your values on others.

Real sex education is about how to, what happens and how to stay health doing it. It imposes no values on the student. This is as opposed to "abstinance only" sex ed, which does nothinng BUT impose its values on the student and uses misinformation and scare tactics to do it.

Perhaps what the Senator really meant to say is that NO EDUCATION entitles you to impose your values on others.

So rather than sensible, factual sex education taught by someone with an academic degree in health, I guess the Senator would prefer abstinance only sex education taught by someone with a divinity degree who believes in the immaculate conception and virgin birth. That would explain the unreasonably high teen pregnancy rate in his state.

Rep. John Duncan, a Tennessee Republican, said that it seems "rather elitist" that people with academic degrees in health think they know better than parents what type of sex education is appropriate.

Duncan is correct. In contrast to the misleading Salon tag-line, Duncan is clearly not saying that scientific training and research are elitist. He's saying that no amount of education or intelligence entitles you to impose your values on others.

Duncan's quote is directed at a belief: that those with superior education kow "better than partents" how children should be taught right and wrong. It's that particular belief that's "elitist."

It's absolutely true that scientific understanding is one thing, and moral choice is a different realm entirely. Scientific training gives us more power to control the world. It doesn't help us decide what's right. Science gives us information, but not direction.

Just as it's important to recognize what scientific advances can do for us, it's important to recognize that questions of morality -- why we're alive, how we should live -- are a matter for personal choice by individuals. It's perfectly reasonable to argue that parents (regardless of their level of education) ought to be deciding what moral values to encourage in their children... rather than having such values imposed top-down by a better-educated elite.

Stuart Resnick

Was he a virgin when he first got married?

Come on, Washington reporters! We think of your questions foir you, do we have to quit our jobs and go there and ask them for you, too?

It's the antidote to elitism. Oh wait, aren't antidotes another form of elitism? Damn, this is tougher than I thought...

Just wondering, when do you learn about sex ed in the US? Is it High School? I assume it varies from state to state, but what's the average? I'd hazard a guess that it's 11th Grade.

Doesn't that seem a little...ummm....late? Why wouldn't you want to explain these things BEFORE it's an issue? Heck even in my Catholic Canadian education we learned about all this stuff in 5th Grade (excepting of course any mention of condoms ;) and you'd have a unit on Sex Ed every year up until 12th Grade. I especially found the last one amusing...that's when they finally broach the topic of contraceptives, but tell you that they're all basically abortions...which made us all laugh, as most people in the class were using birth control anyways. OH! and they made us watch that awful pro-life movie "The Silent Scream"...which again probably didn't have the intended result as all we did was mimic the stilted narrator for weeks afterwards :)

sorry, that was a bit of a tangent there...what can I say? slow day at work.

He's definitely wrong on this issue but he's one of the few Republicans in Congress who is firmly against the Iraq War. I know, stopped clocks and all. Still, we have precious few of those folks in Tennessee and especially in the GOP.....

Should not shy away from being the smarter candidate. Someone is going to have to bring our schools back out of the 50's.

Conservatives of either party are "right" a priori therefore no further thought is ever neccessary on any issue. A lifetime of being trained to reify "faith" leads to the minds operation on a sub-rational thought plane, all knowledge predicated on vigourous rationality becomes a foreign object. Since rational thought calls the foundational belief system into question, anything that can be rationally explained is dubious.

This usage of the word "elitist" is highly reductive, signifying only that something lies outside the realm of ones system of belief. Since rational thought lies outside these boundaries it is therefore by definition, "elitist". You can't have a logical argument with an entity incapable of rational thought, you can only appeal to its emotions.

With the notable exception of Hilary Clinton, this is something most liberals and progressives fail to comprehend. It also explains why conservatives and others who exist on this sublogical plain are so comfortable with their own doublethink. Contradictory positions are easy to maintain when each is grounded in a discrete emotional response specific to that issue.