Wednesday, January 22, 2014

Morning Rant - Sex Ed and Dogma

Just had a great rant with my best friend via email.. Figured I would not waste the rant..

Some of what I have seen/read recently has to do with the establishment of moral underpinnings complicating the teaching of sex education. Given the application that a person's morality is based on a set of rules grounded in emotional constructs, and there are negative connotations applied to the basic attributes of human existence (religions/doctrine/archaic texts tend to lay claim to this perspective) and elicit a strong negative response emotionally when there is a perceived violation of these constructs creating cognitive dissonance. These rules are applied to elicit fear or trepidation and less to do with actual learning of reproduction and the actions associated with it.

 Parents of these students are so heavily entrenched in their thinking and the fear of information reaching their child that is contrary to the dogmatic principles they are infected with that it nearly paralyzes their actions. A parent shirking their responsibility for sexual education to the school or another entity should clearly understand that the actions of sexual reproduction, and/or sexual acts will be discussed in detail and without the associated emotional content.

 If one can separate the emotional construct from the context of a behavioral action based in reproductive biology and present only the facts associated with the reproductive act that is sex education. Chillingly there are so many religious and conservative factions that apply artificial rules or frameworks to this associating a strong emotional content because of the morality that was dispensed at a very young age.

 As a matter of circumstance and relevance morality does not come from dogma, doctrine or religious scripture. It existed long prior to the establishment of any religious or dogmatic construct written down in a book or on a rock somewhere.

 What is difficult for many people is to discern the fact that actions of reproduction should be taught, (somewhere, accurately an positively) so that the fledgling humans are not guessing and causing injury, spreading disease or unintentional pregnancies. The willful ignorance that most, if not all, religious sects advocate does nothing to foster development of independent rational actions or thoughts associated with reproduction.

 Whether the religies, conservatives, liberals, or just your basic human loons get it or not.... reproduction is going to happen between humans... whether they like it or not.... Morals taught by parents or teachers are irrelevant if based on complex dogmatic principles. Sexual behavior is a primary drive in humans equitable to the drive to obtain food and water. This has taken place for millions of years and the artificial application of dogmatic morality in the last 3000-4000 years only leads to complicate it further. Think of it this way we are teaching our kids morals and reproductive science based on a Bronze Age dogma. What does that say for us as a species?

 Facts and behaviors are real and can be measured and observed. To apply dogmatic principles to establish some moral code to this conduct only adds a layer of complexity that the student rarely if ever can understand due to the underdeveloped cerebral cortex of any human under the age of 25.

 If we don’t make some kind of effort to grow up we are destine to be stuck in the dark ages.

No comments:

Post a Comment