CurvedSpace Forums: Sex Education - CurvedSpace Forums

Go to your nearest college campus... they practically hand them out here! I have a collection going...

Water balloon fight! Wait, these aren't balloons...

Isn't the school being abusive then, by your definition?



Most of my studies are independent, actually. There's no need for me to have a parent breathing down my back all day, and I find it possible to get my work done with little or no help. That may just be me, but I have noticed that by their mid-teens most other home schoolers can learn on their own also. However, I can't say much for the 1st-8th grade aged home-schooled, as I was attending a public or private school during those years.

Classes on evolution should contain a chapter on the refutation of Design/Creation theories. They will be taught ID/Creationism, but it will be presented as a false theory. In essence, we do teach geocentric theory the same way. What I meant to say is that schools will not present ID (a false theory) as if it were true, but parents certainly can. I don't know if I'd call that abuse, as I think it is simply done out of ignorance, not malice. It is because of this potential ignorance that we need to impose guidelines on homeschooling parents.

[s]o.O Non-biased, mah favorite. [/sarcasm?]

Hmm, the wording was a bit biased perhaps but I can see what he meant by it. Creationism certainly can't be exposed as 'false', as it's a belief system and the absense of proof for it is not proof against it.

Intelligent design is a little different though. As a scientific theory (which it claims to be) it hinges heavily on the concept of irreducible complexity, that there exist within organisms some mechanisms that could not have evolved over time, a piece at a time. That they must have sprung into being already complete, because as soon as a component is removed the entire thing does not work. The human eye is a common example of this, as is the motor used for propulsion in a cell's flagellum. However every single example that has been proposed as proof of irreducible complexity has been found to be wrong, that it can be reduced while retaining some function and thus could have evolved. Some organisms might well have over time evolved light-sensitive patches, that would certainly provide an evolutionary advantage in some situations. Over time that could well evolve into something as sensitive as an eye, one step at a time. It's been found that even something as complex as an eye actually doesn't take all that many generations to evolve, surprisingly.

Anyway, if irreducible complexity is not based on any real example, evidence or experimental data, then it is not falsifiable. There's no reason to believe it exists, nor is it being used to account for experimental data that would be inexplicable otherwise. It is not a valid scientific theory, merely another aspect of a belief system. Thus the same can be said of Intelligent Design itself. It's merely Creationism in some shiny new clothes, not necessarily wrong but not to be mistaken for a scientific theory. Evolution is a scientific theory however, so as long as religion is seperated from education one will be appropriate to teach in public schooling and the other will not.


As for your experiences with home schooling, I would still suspect you're in the minority to be capable of constructive self-focused learning. While I too can only rely on my own experience, I've seen a lot of people of that kind of age group fail pretty badly at self-directed learning without someone to focus them down useful avenues and make sure they're keeping up. I think the kind of person that can partake in truly self-motivated and directed learning without leaving large gaping holes in their knowledge (which are expected in the more rigidly defined school curriculum) would be quite rare. It's just that our data set is pretty badly biased by the fact that it's mostly these people (who are not going to fit in well within a rigid structure such as a school) who will attempt home schooling in the first place. They're not necessarily smarter or less socially able, merely a different optimal learning method. I consider myself fairly intelligent and I've certainly had some reasonable success with self-directed learning, but I doubt I could handle it as a sole source of knowledge.

Also the social aspects of formal schooling should probably not be overlooked. Some of the people I've met who did large amounts of home schooling would tend to be a little overly self-important, and didn't quite know when to pick their fights when working from a position of lower authority. I would suspect that these effects would be eliminated or lessened by having done some formal schooling at lower levels though (like you did, Bobette), since that's when a lot of that behaviour is acquired.

In my encounters, all those who favored creationism maintained that the creator is not deceitful. This form of creationism has been falsified. The evidence that so strongly favors evolution is testament to that. The alternative is that God is deceitful, and plants false evidences everywhere we look to make the world appear exactly as it would have it we had evolved, even though it didn't. The biggest evidence for that would be our second chromosome being fused.

<3

No, I'd disagree with you there Alpha. The general creationist belief is of a benevolent creator, which under normal circumstances would not involve deceit. However there are too many possible arguments that could be used to explain it, involving the misinformation somehow being in our best longterm interests. Perhaps it's meant to help foster a stronger sense of scientific inquiry which was deemed necessary for our species to thrive. Maybe it was decided that not all humans were capable of accepting the truth, and that for those who weren't a fiction was kinder?

Children constantly get lied to by people who care for them, parents especially. Schoolteachers will lie to you throughout your entire education. They're not being malicious, it's just often not possible or practical to explain the entire truth to a child, the comprehension won't be there. I don't think it's too far-fetched to see that same argument applying to an immature species such as ourselves. Deceit? In concrete terms yes, but pragmatically probably not. Creationism is a belief system, and for better or worse they're pretty much immune to the kind of strict true/false reasoning you're trying to apply. There's always going to be some possible way to explain the belief as not being contradictory, if you try hard enough.

That's all devil's advocate stuff, I'm still quite firmly an atheist. I usually find myself reacting more strongly to perceived flaws in the argument of someone who agrees with me, rather than someone who disagrees. I guess it's a subconscious attempt to avoid losing debates due to a kind of self-inflicted straw man fallacy.

... Hey, how did you know I use the internet?

Well, if a God exists and is capable of being deceitful in any way, then nothing can be known of this God, since anything you do know could just be one of her benevolent deceptions. Also, one could not come to know whether or not God is or isn't deceitful in the first place, as a deceitful God could simply lie and reveal the she is not deceitful. My point is, creationism doesn't have any ground to stand on, but despite this, that damn cayote won't fall until he looks down.

Meh. This topic went from "Sex Education" to "Homeschooling is stupid" to "Christians are completely retarded." Well, I'm going to leave this topic; it's too hostile.

Alpha, you're kind of missing the point. Nothing could be known about a god like that, but nothing can be known about any god anyway? It's belief, that's the entire point of religion. You're trying to disprove a religion by saying that if we did have proof of the existence of god, that we wouldn't have proof of the nature of that god. I think that's pretty irrelevant, really.
Anyway you're the one asserting that believers all say that their god is honest, that's not really what I tend to see being used as the fundamental quality. I think most believers would think of benevolence as being the primary characteristic of their god, which only really implies honesty in situations where it wouldn't be better in the long run (to the humans involved) for god to lie.

I think if there exists any sort of higher being (be it God, or simply some sort of life that transcends our three-dimensional view of the universe) then concepts such as the 'truth' would tend to break down anyway, far more or our reality is subjective than we're likely to realize.


We probably should leave the issue, anyway. We're pretty far off-topic, and Ziggy is right that some posts have had a certain hostile flavour to them.

I seemed to have passed this over when I first read it:

When debating, I specifically ask them if they believe God can deceive, even if for a good cause. They almost always so "no, God cannot." In this way, I believe I have adequately shown that their views are wrong. It is only then that they either reject the evidence (as they often do) or they switch to your view (of their view) that he can deceive for a good cause.

I would like to say that I do not thing that Christians (and Theists in general) are in any way retarded or mentally inferior to me. They simply assert something to be true without any evidence, and/or with evidence to the contrary. This isn't being unintelligent, just unscientific. My original point was that children need to be taught SCIENCE, and thus unscientific stuff should not be taught as science (creationism, ID, homeopathy, astrology, alchemy, etc.). I think people also need to learn about these things and how science discredits all of them. Children have a right to knowledge, and I believe it is a duty of the state to interfere with the raising of a child if the child's parents are supressing the child's right to knowledge.

I should also make myself clear in that I am not against a parent's right to misinform the child. Misinformation will always be present, and no matter what any state does, a child will always be misinformed. A child should be taught how to distinguish credible from incredible information, though.

In the original case of sexual education, it is necessary for the government to supply the child with a full range of knowledge on the subject. Some parents will be able to do this on their own, and that is perfectly ok. Abstinence only education has been a big problem. Often, programs have been shown to misinform children by using incorrect statistics and factualy errors. Even worse, (in the US) programs include religious instruction and indoctrinization. Here in the US, this is unconstitutional, but our constitution is sometimes ignored by religious institutions (though, they are getting better at respecting it, I have noticed). Lastly, it is less effective than comprehensive programs at achieving lower unwanted natality and STI transmission rates.

Parents that homeschool should not be allowed to urge abstinence only, but may still urge their kids to remain abstinent. They simply need to include other options in their lectures.

Whether or not you think you're smarter than religious people, you kind of give that impression when you talk about science discrediting all religion and that (in relation to religion) parents have a right to misinform their children. Value judgements still mean as much when they're done unintentionally due to word choice.

Well, maybe I do come across like this, but it really can't be helped. I don't give much respect to flat-earthers or geocentricists, and I don't see how young-earth creationists are any better. I do respect religious people who have a "God used evolution" view. I disagree with it, but it isn't falsifiable, so I don't complain. The difference is in the other three mentioned have been falsified, it's just not accepted by the adherents. Redicule is really the only way I can get through here...

Regardless, I'm sorry if I offend anyone or come off as hostile.

As for the misinformation part, I don't only apply it to religion. My primary concern with allowing parents to misinform their children is the perpetuation of the Santa and Toothfairy myths I loved as a kid. Not only did I like believing as a kid, I loved learning the truth and becomming a part of the 'knowing' group. I love misinforming by baby cousins and keeping the magic alive, so I would be against ANY law preventing parental misinformation. Here's an interesting story about what I mean:

http://news.bbc.co.u...ope/7161468.stm