On today's edition of This Week with George Stephanopoulos the topic of McCain's misleading ad about Barack Obama's support of age-appropriate sex ed came up. Age-appropriate sex education for kindergarten is understood to be teaching the difference between appropriate and inappropriate touching to help children protect themselves against predators. All of the panelists agreed the McCain ad was dishonest, except George Will, who challenged anyone to explain why it was dishonest. Once someone did, Will shifted his argument to the erstwhile Culture War and pompously opined that "It is very common across the centuries that parents, not schools, parents tell their children to beware of strangers. What's new here, and reflects a conservative/liberal difference, is the idea that a)it has to be tarted up as sex education, beware of strangers, and b)parents can't do it, schools must - in kindergarten! Now that's a cultural divide and let's vote."
As usual, Will's assertion was punctuated with contempt for anyone who is so stupid as to disagree with him. But he doesn't understand the issue at all.
This is from the US Department of Veterans Affairs National Center for Post Traumatic Stress Disorders:
"Most often, sexual abusers know the child they abuse but are not relatives. In fact, about 60% of perpetrators are nonrelative acquaintances, such as a friend of the family, babysitter, or neighbor.
About 30% of those who sexually abuse children are relatives of the child, such as fathers, uncles, or cousins.
Strangers are perpetrators in about 10% of child sexual abuse cases."
Accordingly, to adopt Mr. Will's admonition to beware of strangers would protect children from only 10% of predators. Why does George Will want children to be exposed to 90% of abusers?
What does a child do when a parent or the close friend of a parent abuses her? And if a child has grown up in an abusive environment, how does he know that it is not appropriate. Children have a way of believing adults and blaming themselves.
George Will is a pompous idiot, who like most people who have too high an esteem of their own intelligence no longer think it is necessary to acquire actual facts or engage in actual analysis. No wonder children are at risk.
Culture war, my ass! This is about smart vs. stupid.
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
2 comments:
So essentially what you are suggesting is that people who sexually abuse children probably won't teach said children about the dangers of that sort of thing?
Seems reasonable enough to me.
I've never understood why there is such a backlash against sex-ed in public schools. There's always an opt-out agreement and many parents know that they will never bring up the topic with their children.
Furthermore, more parents and clergy should realize that the school system is the best place to give out the facts and the home/church is the best place to discuss the implications and moral guidelines.
Post a Comment