My reaction: a substantial portion of sex ed classes ought to be devoted to teaching kids how to think about probabilities.

Hilarious and disturbing. Even so…this is one of the reasons why I ban use of electronic devices in my courses.

@ Another Anon Junior Person:

I have no problem with a little incivility from time to time. But if you are going to pour scorn you should make sure innocent bystanders don’t get sprayed. None of the people involved (including her own son!) knew she was live tweeting a discussion they were participating in. The bar for that to be permissible ought to be pretty high.

We don’t actually have any idea what went down in the class. Someone with an axe to grind could live tweet a meeting of your philosophy course and give a highly misleading picture of what you were trying to impart.

Finally, the whole thing comes across as so smug and self-congratulatory that it is difficult for me to take it seriously as protest.

Professor Plum, I’m not sure why this seems classist. A very large number of schools where abstinence education is used as sex ed are expensive, private, religious institutions.

“Sure, taken out of context, there is plenty to object to here”

Also, one suspects, taken in context.

I’m not actually a very big fan of _any_ tweeting, live or otherwise. I think that, with very limited exceptions, it’s mostly a net negative to humanity. But this really does sound like a case where a pretty seriously bad bit of “education” was imposed upon students. I can believe it because of the very similar by of “education” that was imposed upon me years ago. In this case, for anyone who recognizes such things, it’s easy to see that the real evil is the (mis) education, and that the bad of the “tweeting” is a comparative minor thing. Anyone who sees otherwise, I think, is straining at a mote in the eye of their neighbor while ignoring a beam in their own.

And a further thought: How can a system of public education be held accountable to the public it is supposed to serve unless the inner workings of the curriculum are opened up, now and again, to public scrutiny? With something as fraught and as hedged about with shame and secrecy as sex education tends to be, in the U.S., that opening-up of the curriculum might necessarily have to be rude.

Professor Plum, if there is any non-standard use of “showed” that’s being hinted at here, I didn’t catch the hint. I thought the more obvious reading was that it was being used in the very standard sense of that once a woman’s pregnancy is showing, if she is single and unmarried, or especially young, she may face a huge amount of shaming from those around her.

Professor Plum, in my experience (granted, I am only one person, so I cannot pretend that I have a sense of more general tendencies) shaming women for engaging in sex, for pregnancy, for showing, and so on, more commonly came from those who were wealthy. When I saw “showed” in scare quotes, I assumed it was because the term is sometimes (and in the case described, it seems) used in a derogatory manner.

I take your more general worry about the effects of this approach on our ability to engage in discussion seriously. I’ve been thinking about the broader issue a lot lately (how do we balance approaching disagreement with respect, with kindness, with hope for dialogue, and with understanding, while also refraining from enabling harm to ourselves or third-parties — and I take it this is a case where harm to third parties is a real possibility given the practical importance of sex ed), and I don’t have any decided opinion. I did, though, think your worry about the potential chilling effect on communication was interesting. I’m just surprised by your reading of the class implications because my first (and second) reading went the other way.

I can’t see how discussing one’s own child’s mis-education is a violation of anyone’s privacy or a breach of trust. It’s a breach of trust to spew propaganda to school kids. I read the article. There’s nothing classist in it. This happens at schools of all sorts. It’s not like this is an isolated incident, as opposed to a relatively widespread way in which schools deal with sexuality. It seems completely parallel to the drug education we got from the gym teachers who were tasked with teaching “health” in my day in one of the better funded high schools in Illinois in the mid-1970s. Lots of truthiness and not much truth.

Just to shed some additional light on this, actually my child is one of the students in the class (and I happen to be a Daily Nous reader! Hi!). I don’t know Alice personally, although I do recognize who her son is since our kids have been in school together for years.

Her quotes in the tweets are very accurate portrayals of the content of the class much of this week and (according to my kid) might continue into next week. So, although I definitely realize that quotes on controversial topics can easily be taken out of context and misinterpreted, according to my child, at least, that is absolutely not the case here. This is an accurate portrayal of content spanning more than a single day, as well as all of the content of that day. This isn’t cherry picking, it was ALL that bad.

I also want to make very clear that these were outside guest teachers hired by the district to teach this material. (Overall, it’s a great school district and we love it here, which makes this absurdity even more surprising!) It is a half-year health class and sex ed is just one portion of that. It’s my understanding (but I’m still trying to get details) that these guest teachers are the ENTIRE sex ed content. Also, when her son tried to present counter facts (including a page long list of sources) he was interrupted before he could finish and told that those sources were “not Board approved,” “people can say anything on the internet” and the only valid source was the NAEA (National Abstinence Education Association). These outsider guest teachers are associated with Pregnancy Services of Greater Lansing, a local Christian pro-life, “abortion alternative education” clinic. This is the only required sex ed for all of high school. They are required to take the health class at some point during their 4 years, and most opt to take it freshman year to have more flexible schedules later for advanced coursework. (As well as, I’m sure, the usual teenager “get it over with” attitude most of us have had concerning health classes.)

Also, not only parents, but students themselves have complained to administration in the past about this. Hearing from parents of other graduates, it sounds like this might be either a recent development or that different teachers don’t have these horrible guest teachers. I’m still hoping to get more information on this, but students and parents from students who took the class 11, 6, and 2 years ago have said that it used to cover contraceptive use as well and was not as focused on teaching through terror. It used to be far more balanced. As for the complaints, the inherent sexism of “good girls don’t want sex and good boys pick good girls” (as well as the stupidity of “but if girls have sex they WILL get pregnant and become drug addicts”) has been a big point of complaint in particular from the Gender Equality club of the high school. However, from what they have said as well as other parents who complained about the program, all messages are ignored and never returned.

Oh, and the other articles mention it, but I don’t think it’s been mentioned here. But Alice remained quiet throughout the class but afterwards in the hallway swore in front of other students. She was then banned from the school except for specific activities with her son during which she will be specially monitored. Actually, when my kid was telling me about how awful this class was, the garbage they are teaching, and how clueless these guest teachers are, oddly enough, I actually said the same obscene word. First time ever swearing in front of my kids and first time I’ve said that word in years, and not my most articulate argument I have ever made. But I certainly don’t blame her for having that reaction after sitting through the class for an hour. Too bad she said it at the school and is now banned. I don’t think you have to be very skeptical to wonder the real reason she was punished.

@ #21:
I assume this is directed at me since I described Dreger’s tweets as self-promoting. In response, all I can do is shake my head.

The reason why I think this was a self-promoting stunt has nothing to do with Dreger’s gender and everything to do with her message and medium (everyone knows that twitter and self-promotion go together like peanut butter and jelly). As a woman and a feminist, I don’t appreciate my opinions being dismissed as sexist simply because I challenge what some regard as liberal feminist orthodoxy.