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Polly Today

She can be a little bloodthirsty, can\’t she?

It is good news too that more pregnant teenagers are opting for abortions – though at fewer than half, that\’s still low.

It\’s true however that sex education is quite bad:

This week the Youth Parliament marches in to see the education minister Jim Knight, armed with the results of its impressively large survey. Over 20,000 school students surveyed reported an abysmal standard of sex and relationship education (SRE): 40% said it was poor or very poor, 33% said it was average; worse, 55% of 12-to 15-year-olds had not been taught how to use a condom, nor had 57% of girls aged 16-17. More than half had never been told where to find their local sexual health clinic.

Polly\’s solution to the State providing such crap is:

It is extraordinary that sex education still isn\’t compulsory in all secondary schools.

Yup. The State is shite at sex education thus it should be compulsory for the State to provide it.

15 thoughts on “Polly Today”

  1. So Polly is not actually ‘Pro-Choice’ but ‘Pro-Abortion’? Unless, of course, they are being aborted for gender or race reasons, when it is, off course, an outrage and becomes ‘foeticide’ Copyright.BBC 2007

  2. It didn’t even seem worth making that point in response to her column this week, it is so obvious where her logic falls down.

    I did feel the need to pull her up on her idea of telling a “secret” to a nurse/youth worker and it remaining that way for long, following the advent of NuLab’s centralised medical and childrens’ databases!

  3. Parents…?!? What a strange suggestion…

    Only education and health ‘professionals’ are qualified, in the New World of State Education, to impart such knowledge.

  4. “aborted for gender”

    Don’t know why we worry (well, I do: whining statists with too much time and money). Let’s see how it will go:

    1. Culture X values males over females.
    2. Females are killed.
    3. Lots and lots of X males, few females.
    4. Females become rare.
    5. Parents of females suddenly have desired asset on their hands.
    6. Parents of females start demanding dowries rather than other way round.
    7. Having female babies starts becoming lucrative.
    8. Culture X changes to favour female babies more and males less.
    9. Balance restored.

    This is mirrored in the natural world too:

    http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sex_ratio

  5. Justin

    You wouldn’t be generalising from the particular, would you? Otherwise we could all be arguing for a reductio ad absurdum and have ‘management consultants’ in charge of all aspects of parenting.

    Now there’s a thought………………………………

  6. So Much For Subtlety

    Well if we’re going to play with policies why don’t we try one that works – cut their benefits.

    OK America did not quite go that far but the Clinton welfare reforms resulted in a massive and sustained drop in teen pregnancies and births. That is, not all of them were aborted.

    Forget fiddling with stupid policies like asking the Stopes people to teach children about the joys of abortion, cut the incentive.

  7. Recusant, you can read it any way you like.

    I see it thus:

    1. We have the highest teenage pregnancy rates in Europe.
    2. State sex education is ‘shite’, apparently.
    3. Parents should take more responsibility, apparently.
    4. Many parents are incapable of taking on this responsibility, apparently.
    5. Ergo, who teaches the parents to teach their kids sex education? Can anyone point to someone in the private sector with that specialism?

  8. Hmm, that family that Justin quotes as evidence that the Government should run sex education because the parents aren’t up to it:

    “The Williams sisters, who live with their mother in a council house in Derby…”

    Something…missing…there. Can’t put my finger on it, though…

  9. And to enphasis TLFS’s point about cutting their benefits:

    “Two of the girls are no longer in contact with their children’s fathers. …”

    So we (the State) are supporting them.

    Does anyone seriously think that these girls got pregnant through ignorance, or lack of access to contraception?

  10. Justin, I think the argument runs as follows:

    Parents are the best people to provide sex-education. But lots of them aren’t bothering to do it because they have been mollycoddled and tricked into thinking that this is the state’s job. So what we need to do is withdraw all state-provided sex-education immediately in order to incentivise parents to do it themselves (or come up with private sector solutions). Admittedly this will be an unmitigated disaster for a generation or two, but it’ll be better in the long run.

  11. Larry,

    Wouldn’t a better suggestion be a concerted effort in cutting state sex education to basic biology as well as benefits? Additionally making parents of the childbearers the primary caregivers? I’m sure many parents would feel differently about sex education provision AND letting their children run ragged on streets at night if they were forced to pay for the consequences (at least in part; I’m cynical enough to know that some parents just dont care – I live in the north).

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