It's sound byte politics at its best. At least the article Thecla linked explains the context of Obama's statement - which many resultant news stories have failed to do. In New Hampshire (I can't speak for Massachusetts) the state legislature passed a law about sexual education. The law ensured one thing, the right of a community to approach sexual education as they deem appropriate. As a result, it allowed communities to teach children about sexual predators before the age of 11 if the community deemed it necessary.
Since the law has been passed very little has changed in my community. In our town sex-ed is taught starting in the 7th grade with lessons about biological conception and birth. The more 'personal' side of sex education, including STD's, prophylactics et. al., is reserved until high school. As far as I know, there have been no moves to start teaching children anything younger than 7th grade. But thanks to NH law, if there comes a time when the community feels it needs to get the word out, it can.
Although my community has remained relatively sheltered from sex crimes, other towns like Raymond NH has not. Recently, a man was found to have over 150,000 pictures of child pornography on his computer. I'm unsure whether the community will react to the incident publicly, but if they do choose to they have the ability to without having to worry about skirting the issue because of sex education laws.
With that said, I have a feeling the media is more to blame for turning this into sound byte politics than Romney's camp. From what I can see, Romney spoke to a group of social conservatives in SC and made it clear that for him sexual education of any kind shouldn't be taught to young children. And that's a highly defensible position. Now if they media hadn't taken that comment and put it on the national news as a 'Romney vs. Obama: Sexual Education in Kindergarten', I don't think there'd be much to talk about. Instead, the issue gets muddled, and everyone is fed sound bytes out of context. The worst-case-scenario media at its best.
Cheers,
Munk
PS. Hope this is a more acceptable reply, Thecla:)
Since the law has been passed very little has changed in my community. In our town sex-ed is taught starting in the 7th grade with lessons about biological conception and birth. The more 'personal' side of sex education, including STD's, prophylactics et. al., is reserved until high school. As far as I know, there have been no moves to start teaching children anything younger than 7th grade. But thanks to NH law, if there comes a time when the community feels it needs to get the word out, it can.
Although my community has remained relatively sheltered from sex crimes, other towns like Raymond NH has not. Recently, a man was found to have over 150,000 pictures of child pornography on his computer. I'm unsure whether the community will react to the incident publicly, but if they do choose to they have the ability to without having to worry about skirting the issue because of sex education laws.
With that said, I have a feeling the media is more to blame for turning this into sound byte politics than Romney's camp. From what I can see, Romney spoke to a group of social conservatives in SC and made it clear that for him sexual education of any kind shouldn't be taught to young children. And that's a highly defensible position. Now if they media hadn't taken that comment and put it on the national news as a 'Romney vs. Obama: Sexual Education in Kindergarten', I don't think there'd be much to talk about. Instead, the issue gets muddled, and everyone is fed sound bytes out of context. The worst-case-scenario media at its best.
Cheers,
Munk
PS. Hope this is a more acceptable reply, Thecla:)