The last few posts have been interesting.

However, some things have been forgotten about. All parents want to look out for their offspring but cannot do that 24/7.

Then there are other factors to take into consideration.

Alcohol, Drugs and Rape (of which rape is on the increase). Also is there concern for teenage pregnancies or out-of-wedlock ones?

Many today have children and remain unmarried yet do a superb job in supporting and raising their children, so does that give cause to castigate those parents because they are not married?

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I am not against sex education, but it is the job of the parents not the schools. I did NOT say it was a waste of time, just that the schools shouldn't be the ones doing it.

Quite correct, ideally it SHOULD be the parents doing it, but when these days, most seem to abdicate from that responsibility, then it IS unfortunately left up to the schools to try to fill the gap.

OK folks, this is getting a bit bad tempered. ES99 is getting a bit of a bashing here which she doesn't fully deserve. She is quite capable of defending herself, and will do, but that isn't the point. Can we all calm down please.

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Schools these days are way too busy teaching kids crap like 'use a condom' to be able to teach vital life-skills, it seems.

I'm guessing you skipped that class or you'd have some idea what an important life skill it is.

Controlling fertility and reducing the spread of disease has been one of the things that has caused civilisation to flourish.

During WW1 150,000 British soldiers got either gonorrhea or syphilis while serving in France. I'd say that if they'd been taught to use condoms in school they might have served the war effort a little better.

Currently there are antibiotic resistant strains of these diseases that are becoming more prevalent. So I'd say the kids that can use a condom have a significantly better chance at survival than those that don't.

Worldwide 1,700,000 die of aids every year. Countries with the lowest rates of aids infection are the ones that have been teaching children how to use condoms.

For anyone to say that learning about safe sex is a waste of time in this day and age is a sign of such profound ignorance that no wonder the world is heading for collapse.

Not only am I totally stunned that someone would even say that teaching our youth to be safe and protect others is a waste of time, I am completely gobsmacked that anyone would agree. Are people really so ignorant that I even have to say this?

Well, since YOU are being insulting...

I know what 'important life skills' are. I also know that schools are there to teach the academic ones. Schools are failing miserably at even teaching the basic ones (such as reading, writing, and arithmetic) to WAY too many students. The fault for this is squarely on the teachers and their 'professional organizations'.

Those British soldiers from WW1 would NOT have gotten VD if they had kept their pants on.

Condoms are NOT a reliable method of birth control. About a 20% failure rate even when correctly applied and used. If pregnancy can happen, so can VD spread. Even hormonal birth control methods (which do NOTHING to stop spread of VD) have failure rates of between 0.5% and around 3%.

John and Jane may not be able to read the label on a bunch of bananas, or be able to figure out how much 0.7 kilograms of bananas cost without using a fookin calculator... But they DO know how to put a condom on one! Look at that! Aren't all the teachers PROUD!!! Blargh. Failure teachers produce failure students.

I am not against sex education, but it is the job of the parents not the schools. I did NOT say it was a waste of time, just that the schools shouldn't be the ones doing it.

I'd say that if they'd been taught to use condoms in school they might have served the war effort a little better.

If they had been taught to keep their pants on by their parents, they might have served the war effort a little better.

Currently there are antibiotic resistant strains of these diseases that are becoming more prevalent

There are antibiotic resistant strains because WAY too many didn't keep their pants on and caught them. Use of antibiotics leads to resistant strains of whatever bacterial disease it is. The more common the disease, the faster the resistant strains develop.

Worldwide 1,700,000 die of aids every year. Countries with the lowest rates of aids infection are the ones that have been teaching children how to use condoms.

AIDS has multiple transmission vectors. However, the main one is as an STD. Keeping one's pants on will eliminate that vector.

For anyone to say that learning about safe sex is a waste of time in this day and age is a sign of such profound ignorance that no wonder the world is heading for collapse.

It is the BIG LIE of Liberalism/Progressivism that if someone does not want the Government (in this case, the public school system) doing something, they do not want it done at all.

Is the objective here the elimination of STDs and out-of-wedlock pregnancy? If so, then condom use is not the way to go. The ONLY way to reliably prevent STDs and out-of-wedlock pregnancy is NO sex AT ALL outside of a committed, monogamous, lifelong relationship.

The Liberals/Progressives throw band-aid ineffective solutions at various 'problems', pretending that they are helping the people with those problems. They do not WANT to actually solve those problems because doing so would deprive them of money, political power, and influence. They just want to present the appearance of doing so in order to keep people voting for them.

Don't act all righteously indignant here. You do not have the moral high ground.

If you wish to persist in this behavior, go Potter-Stewart yourself.

In the past, it was a shameful act. Today we celebrate unwed children having children. What are we celebrating? The creation of another downward spiral into poverty and government dependency?

Teaching children that it's ok to succumb to the biological sex drive is only adding to a societal problem.

Place your bet.

You do know that teaching them contraception is the best way to prevent unwanted pregnancies by far? This isn't even open for debate. Its a fact.

Please tell me how you expect people not to succumb to the sex drive when they don't even know what it is? Its hard to avoid something you have no understanding of.

I am sure your daughter will thank you for taking her back to the dark ages when women kept having babies because they didn't know where they were coming from. You think I am exaggerating or joking? No, that is how it was back then.

Ignorance is not protection. Anyone who has a teen will teach them how to prevent unwanted pregnancies and disease if they love them at all. They will teach them what sex is so that they can't be lied to and tricked into doing something they don't understand. Trust me, I've taught sex ed long enough to know some of the terrifying misconceptions teenagers can have about sex.

Please, if you love your daughter and want to protect her, please, please teach her how to protect herself. If you and I don't ever agree on anything ever again, please listen to me about this.

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Reality Internet Personality

You are incredibly insulting.

Not to you personally I'm not, never intended to be, and you very well know that. But I can understand and accept that you would want to support your profession.

It was your profession to.

I don't think teaching sex ed is important because I am trendy. I think it is important because it is the most empowering thing you can teach a person, especially girls. I genuinely think it is child abuse to withhold information about a person's own body and reproductive systems from a teenager who is aware of these changes, sometimes frightened by them and has no way of understanding or controlling them unless they are given information. To say it is done because its "trendy" ignores the massive amount of suffering and ill caused in the past to women by insufficient sex education. Its the one thing that should and must be taught and is far more fundamental and life changing that the 3Rs.

As to the 3 Rs, also don't believe in rote memorisation of facts. I believe in teaching children to think. I believe in trusting the research on how best to educate people, I believe in teaching children how to learn. The UK education system was when I left one of the best and most progressive in the world. The problem was the massive amount of disrespect given to the profession by politicians, the media and the parents. If no one else respects teachers then how on earth to you expect children to? They learn their values from those around them. So your comment was insulting and dismissive. It was coming from a place of profound ignorance as to why we need to teach these things to our children. I am sure that in your day you learnt the 3Rs and were quite happy with it. I went through one of the school systems that you put down and it taught me to think. I know which skill I value more.

taught by teachers wo are more interested in being trendy and with it, then teaching the basics.

You want top marks from OFSTED Inspectors, you have to be seen to be embracing the latest DfE dogma. Teaching the basics of the three R's seems to me and many others to have gone out of fashion. We built an Empire on that basis for gods sake.

What has OFSTED current got to do with being a good teacher? Its currently a political tool used to shut schools and make them into profit making academies.

Britain built an empire on being bloodthirsty pirates. I am pretty sure the 3Rs had little to do with it.

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Reality Internet Personality

You are incredibly insulting.

Not to you personally I'm not, never intended to be, and you very well know that. But I can understand and accept that you would want to support your profession.

taught by teachers wo are more interested in being trendy and with it, then teaching the basics.

You want top marks from OFSTED Inspectors, you have to be seen to be embracing the latest DfE dogma. Teaching the basics of the three R's seems to me and many others to have gone out of fashion. We built an Empire on that basis for gods sake.

Safe sex is no sex until A) the child becomes a responsible adult and B) the responsible adults enter into a monogamous relationship.

And it's ultimately the parent's responsibility to make this happen.

LMAO.

Spoken by someone who A) has no idea about teenagers and the biological sex drive B) Who expects people to become responsible adults by withholding information from them.

Your method has been shown to not work and cause the highest rate of teenage pregnancies. I really hope you don't have a daughter because I'd be willing to wage money on her being pregnant before she's 18. You've certainly increased the odds for her.

Good luck grandpa.

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Reality Internet Personality

Schools these days are way too busy teaching kids crap like 'use a condom' to be able to teach vital life-skills, it seems.

I would 100% agree with you, but look on the positive side. More condoms, means less divvy kids being produced by divvy parents, taught by teachers wo are more interested in being trendy and with it, then teaching the basics.

You are incredibly insulting.

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Reality Internet Personality

...

Schools these days are way too busy teaching kids crap like 'use a condom' to be able to teach vital life-skills, it seems.

I'm guessing you skipped that class or you'd have some idea what an important life skill it is.

Controlling fertility and reducing the spread of disease has been one of the things that has caused civilisation to flourish.

During WW1 150,000 British soldiers got either gonorrhea or syphilis while serving in France. I'd say that if they'd been taught to use condoms in school they might have served the war effort a little better.

Currently there are antibiotic resistant strains of these diseases that are becoming more prevalent. So I'd say the kids that can use a condom have a significantly better chance at survival than those that don't.

Worldwide 1,700,000 die of aids every year. Countries with the lowest rates of aids infection are the ones that have been teaching children how to use condoms.

For anyone to say that learning about safe sex is a waste of time in this day and age is a sign of such profound ignorance that no wonder the world is heading for collapse.

Not only am I totally stunned that someone would even say that teaching our youth to be safe and protect others is a waste of time, I am completely gobsmacked that anyone would agree. Are people really so ignorant that I even have to say this?

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Reality Internet Personality

If society does go through some kind of cataclysmic reset, it won't be the kids who know how to use condoms who survive.

Sadly you may be right.

Look, this all started because WK posted a link to a report in the Independent Newspaper. Firstly, that paper only has a circulation of 66,000 so nobody takes anything they say with much credence. Secondly the report is given more typespace that it warrants because it is apparently "NASA funded".

Using theoretical models to predict what will happen to the industrialised world over the course of the next century or so, mathematicians found that even with conservative estimates things started to go very badly, very quickly. His research, carried out with the help of a team of natural and social scientists and with funding from Nasa’s Goddard Space Flight Center, has been accepted for publication in the Ecological Economics journal, the Guardian reported.

Motesharri explored the factors which could lead to the collapse of civilisation, from population growth to climate change, and found that when these converge they can cause society to break down because of the “stretching of resources” and “the economic stratification of society into ‘Elites’ and ‘Masses’”.

Wondered when the Guardian would get in on the act. So yet another "scientist" trying to educate the word that the have nots get miffed at the haves.

Next.

Look, why don't we just all stop having kids, then we wouldn't have a civilisation to worry about.

Well if your father had those very same thoughts, just think, these boards would be a lot more sensible.

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Schools these days are way too busy teaching kids crap like 'use a condom' to be able to teach vital life-skills, it seems.

I would 100% agree with you, but look on the positive side. More condoms, means less divvy kids being produced by divvy parents, taught by teachers wo are more interested in being trendy and with it, then teaching the basics.

Look, why don't we just all stop having kids, then we wouldn't have a civilisation to worry about. Makes sense to me. Analysis Spock? It is logical Captain.

Schools these days are way too busy teaching kids crap like 'use a condom' to be able to teach vital life-skills, it seems.

Oh right, because preventing the spread of STD's and unwanted teen pregnancies are things we could go without <_<

no one could buy any. All tills seem to need electricity nowadays, and automatic doors won't open.

I think I'm correct in that all till drawers have a manual release mechanism. Any enterprising shopkeeper could set up a few candles for light and sell some more by taking cash over the counter and ringing it up later when the power comes back. Pubs have been doing that for "afters" for decades! Although you wouldn't want to open a large supermarket with people helping themselves in the dark and sneaking out without paying.

At least here in the USA you have a bigger problem than just getting into the cash register (till as you call it... the manual release is usually with a key). There is sales tax to be figured and added in. The cash registers automatically figures it out. Some items are taxable, some are not. The cash register automatically figures it out from the item barcode. Then there is the matter of the change due the customer. Old phartz like me were taught in school to rapidly 'make change' in our heads, but the kids these days... Totally lost without the cash register telling them how much change to give back to the customer.

Schools these days are way too busy teaching kids crap like 'use a condom' to be able to teach vital life-skills, it seems.

It's not the 1% it's the 0.0001% or less.
Britain’s five richest families worth as much as poorest 20 per cent, says Oxfam

and automatic doors won't open.

Our department building has the opposite problem, the doors are held shut by magnetic locks, so if there's a power cut they all open. Good if there's a fire but bad for security.
They relock once the backup generator starts working after about 30 seconds.

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Life on earth is the global equivalent of not storing things in the fridge.