Character and Sex Education

As Americans we go to sire a lettered view toward finish upuality as a normal, healthy part of life. However, it seems that integrity may infraestimate the power that stimulate has on culture, which is evident in the many atomic number 18as. Most recently discussions on a versed nature received extreme national prominence with the public events surrounding the Kenneth Starr probe and report, which focuses on the informal aspects of the relationship between President Bill Clinton and a former intern, Monica Lewinsky. The result was a war of beliefs, morals and differences of cultures mixed with semipolitical anipulations.With the increase of finish upual presence in our society, it is often wondered how this increase has unnatural morals and values of those who live it. evoke is everywherenot estimable limited to the bedroom, but to the television, movies, billboards, office buildings and almost every frag ment of advance(a) culture. Around the put out of the twenti eth century, open discussion and study of energise was well on its way. Sexual/cultural pi championer, Sigmund Freud believed that cozyity was tightly twist in all persons, yield from birth.His breakthrough thinking affected pleasant practices and was nstrumental in breaking the moral fog that had enshrouded versedity for most of the ordinal century did not begin to lift until after the First field War (Janus 1993). By analyzing modern culture, a person can accurately determine the effects of the cozy r ontogeny and how it has led to the alterations or evolution of personal, moral and Where do we get our morals and values? Character command was what took place in school and society in the past.This drilling of welcome tender conventions seemed to contain our culture for many years. In modern years society has stir uped to the decision-making approach (Kilpatrick 1993). This approach takes many forms, sometimes as a course in itself, sometimes as a strategy in sex fo stering socio-economic classes, sometimes as a unit in civics or social sciencesit has set the tone for modern moral schooling in public and even private schools. The shift from character education to the decision-making model was begun with the best of intentions.The new approach was meant to help students to think to a wideer extent independently and critically astir(predicate) values (Kilpatrick 1993). Followers of this approach claimed that a boylike person would be more than committed to self-disc overed values than to ones that were still if handed d knowledge y adults. That was the hope, but the actual effect of the shift has been quite different. For students, it has meant confusion ab bulge out moral values learning to header values they have scarcely acquired, unlearning values taught at home, and concluding that questions of pay and wrong are always changing with the influence of society.We live in a sexual world, but Americans have been slow to fully roll in the hay its enormous impact. Among those interviewed in the Janus Report who were 18 to 26 years old, 21% of the men and 15% of the women had had sexual intercourse by get on 4 a small percentage of them had had their number one intercourse before age 10. It ought to be the oldest things that are taught to the youngest people. (Noonan 1999) This statement accurately portrays moral education today. The twenty-four hour period America Told the Truth, a 1990 survey of American beliefs and values contains this scene from a California high school.The setting, Friday afternoon and the students are leaving a class in social living. The instructors parting words are, have a great weekend. Be safe. Buckle up. Just say no. And if you cant say No, thence use a condom (Kilpatrick 993) Although the teacher in this example gives a nod in the direction of abstinence, his approach is basically of the responsible sex variety. Sex is an image that Americans have gr accept accustomed too. Sex is everything. If youre uncorrupted looking, then youre having sex. If youre sexy, then youre having sex.If youre having sex, youre popular, and people are more likely to buy stuff from your company if you show people having sex. Sex sells. Sex sells cigarettes. Sex sells cars. Sex sells clothes, alcohol and One way that a breakdown of sexual restraint hurts society is the educational sphere. There is abundant evidence that the more sexually active students do poorly in school and tend to fuddle out more frequently (Noonan 1999). For all of the teenaged girls, who drop out of school, half of them do so because of pregnancy.But that figure besides suggests one small aspect of the problem. The constant distraction caused by worries about sex and about relationships takes a tool on schoolwork. Dieting has run an unfortunate cultural phenomenon, especially for women and girls, whose self-image is often closely linked with their personate image. Eating disorders are more common in girls ecause they believe its their theatrical role in society to be sexy. Numerous studies have been conducted to determine the recital of sexual abuse in eating disorders patients, and the findings have been controversial.The figures range from 7% to 74%, with most studies showing that between 20-69% of anorexics and bulimics have been abused (Janus 1993). It is authorized to note, however that not everyone who has been sexually abused develops anorexia and not all anorexics have been sexually abused. For many survivors, anorexia can also serve as a way to make their bodies less desirable to potential perpetrators. In one sense, mature adolescents deny their sexuality by returning to a immature state, developing amenorreah or loss of menstruation, which is one of the criteria for diagnosing anorexia.Unfortunately, teachers have been slow to discuss sex in absolute moral terms, leaving students with the photograph that its purely as subjective matter. It turns out that when a dults confront teens over sexual misbehaviors, a frequent response is simply, I didnt k flat it was wrong. Everyone is a harvest-festival of his or her culture. We tend to conform to cultural expectations, even if not perfectly. Our present culture sends out confused and misleading messages about sex-messages that, in the coarse run, may cause more harm than good.A former writing table of education observed,I have never had a parent enumerate me that he or she would be offended boy a teacher telling a class that it is better to postpone sex. Or that join is the best setting for sex, and in which to have and raise children. On the contrary, my tactile sensation is that the overwhelming majority of parents would gratefully welcome help in transmittance such values. (Kilpatrick 1993) The long history of sexually ancestral diseases has make aution in sex one of the facts of life. In the late 1980s, the AIDS epidemic made caution in sex a fact of life or death.It was no longer a moral issue. When AIDS surfaced as a national problem, the sexually active momentarily panicked. The enormous tensions generated by these lay waste to STDs made practice of casual sex pause. The new social and sexual changes in lifestyles have been adopted by many other(a) participants. Divorced or separated men and women, newly single, are go out again and searching for sex partners and new love. Parents in their 40s and 50s and 0s are enjoying a new sexual style at the same time their teenage or young adult children are also experimenting with sex, and seeking loving relationships.There are few guidelines now, except for cautions about sexually transmitted diseases. The old rules governing sex no longer apply, and many individuals and couples now create their own moral and lifestyle decisions, or make them in spite of appearance the morality of their own small, peer In the Janus report, 45% of women and 19% of men claimed to have been sexually harassed on their jobs. In the i nterviews, the men attributed the curse they xperienced to both heterosexual and homosexual individuals the women ascribed their harassment almost entirely to men.In an age of liberation, it is interesting that an issue so broad gained national assistance so accidentally. Why all the sudden there an underlying awareness of widespread sexual harassment on the part of women? The intensity and hurrying of reaction to the charges readily obtain this assumption. Sexual Harassment has become a household topic across America. Today, men and women are more informal than ever to explore their sexual beings in or out of marriage. Their ransformed sex roles, feminism movement and the sexual revolution cause increased communication outside the home.Today, medicine, psychology and sociology advise that people should keep on having sex as long as they wish. Sexuality becomes obligeed to the context of the sexual experience, at all ages. season early adolescence are experimenting with full sexual activities of diverse varieties and young couples are seeking sex for reproduction, older couples are enjoying the comfort and excitement of sex in a new appreciated form. A new, vital, and active sexuality has been identified mong mature, and post mature Americans.While society frets about preteens frolicking and college students antics on Spring break in Florida, the graying element of Americans may be leading the way in superior sexual experience (Janus 1993). Other issues relating to sexuality have also made headlines over the past two decades. Divorce rates leaped in the 1970s, absent or self-involved parents and child-rearing practices were blamed for creating misbehaving, out-of-control kids the family was believed to be in big trouble. Very young adults are living together without the benefit f marriage.Meanwhile, kids are experimenting with their own sexuality at earlier and earlier ages. Barely out of their own childhood, teenagers are producing babies at ever-gro wing rates. By the 1980s, nearly a million mothers under 18 were giving birth every year. (Janus 1993) Of these young women, 70% were unmarried, up from 30% only a decade earlier. Some estimates indicate that as many as 10,000 extremely young women age 12 or younger, become pregnant every year. (Janus 1993) The younger these children are when they have their first child, the more likely they are to ave at least one more child before their teen years end.These children who have children are in particular at risk of dropping out of school and becoming social throwaways who face a bleak future and are wanted only on the streets. Later, unable to get and hold jobs, they volition drop out of the labor market as well, creating cycles of deep, depressing, poverty as their children and grandchildren in turn become teenage, single, unemployable parents. This idea represents the situation of our culture to criticize teen parents and to make an example of those kids. look what can happen to you. etc.However, this is not always the case, many teen mothers are extremely successful in personal and professional careers. Many times the father will support the baby who shares his genes, even if they do not act as a family unit. By analyzing many factors where sex is apparent on modern culture, it is obvious how this increased presence has significantly affected values and morals on related topics. There has been a dramatic shift in attitude in just a small period of time and it will be interesting to see how these changes will continue to evolve and adapt to new introductions of culture and its influence.