God forbid we use science

[the Langolier]

Let's do a quick review of the facts.

1) Obama supports educating kids as early as kindergarten on what is appropriate and inappropriate for adults to do to them.

2) Obama refers to this as "age-appropriate" sex education.

3) Romney calls him out for supporting "sex education" for kindergarteners.

If you disagree with calling this "sex education," then I could care less. Semantic quibbles. This is, as far as I can tell, what Obama means by the term, and what Mitt Romney is criticising.

-Jester

Actually that is VERY important difference in semantics. This is the problem with being "politically correct" - no one knows what the hell you are talking about. I read nothing in that article where it states Obama is referring what you stated it means. Your #1 is not sex education. It's sexual ABUSE education. Sex education doesn't focus on inappropriate touching - it's about learning about the reproductive system, what kind of sexual feelings are normal, bodily changes, sex drive, and safe sex. They may also teach about rape, to limited success. A person questioning whether or not they were raped is just as telling as questioning if you are awake or not during a dream: do you ever ask yourself that when you are awake?

What, do you actually think Mitt Romney would not want kids to know what abuse is? That's just silly.

More to the point however, kids quickly learn what touching is not appropriate, so this kindergarten "sex abuse ed" is not a wise solution to what the REAL problem is, which is trying to identify abuse and stop it early. Some sex education course in kindergarten would not serve that end. If kids didn't know the touching was wrong, it would eventually come up in conversation just as casually as anything else. It doesn't. Often victims will rationalize that it isn't abuse, or that their circumstances are special. This comes from the abuse itself and not the fact that thy do not actually recognize it. The problem isn't that they don't understand it's wrong, just that they don't internalize it - a classroom based general sex abuse ed would not be effective in accomplishing that.

EDIT: Also, can someone please explain to me what exactly science-based sex education is? And just how exactly are kindergartens supposed to understand something based in science when their scientific skills extended to being able to count to the number 50 (or beyond for the especially gifted)?