Students Today Aren't Ready for Sex (Education)

Kids in Portland Schools participate in a program called S.T.A.R.S.

When P was in middle school S.T.A.R.S. stood for "Students Today Aren't Ready for Sex". Cool hipster volunteers came to the school to talk about, well. . . you know. . . to go over all those things that us lazy parents count on other people, namely teachers or FOX TV, to explain.

At the end of the lessons, the sixth graders were given pencils that had the full program name printed on them: Students Today Aren't Ready for Sex. The first thing the students did, of course, was to sharpen them all the way down so they just said "Sex". Proving the point pretty well, I'd say.

In high school, S.T.A.R.S. now stands for "Students Talking About Responsible Sexuality". In my dreams, the "talking" part would stay at school but MY kids have to bring it all home.

Yesterday P came home and said: "We talked about the male and female reporductive systems in Health. I was the only girl in the class today, so they focused mostly on the boys. We talked for like 15 minutes about how guys are supposed to give themselves self-exams."

Then, because he's big on fairness, K says "Did they talk about your vagina too?" (Trust me, those are words no mother needs to hear coming from her 13 year old son. About her daughter's va-hee-na.)

"No, we didn't get there. The bell rang."

Figures. Here is another story told by P.:

"So today in S.T.A.R.S. we did a role playing game. . ."

Let me interject here to tell you that to P, a "role playing game" is Dungeons and Dragons, so that's what she was thinking when. . .

"The teacher told us to pick a character so we could practice making responsible sexual decisions. . ."

Now, since P is usally the Dungeon Master in D&D, she didn't have her own "player character" in mind. So she borrowed K's favorite player: a 300 pound, 100 year old 3ft tall dwarf named Bud.



"We rolled dice to see what kinds of decisions our characters had to make. Well, unfortunately Bud made some bad sexual choices. He got a 17-year-old girl pregnant having unprotected sex. And he got Chlamydia."

K was pretty upset that she let that happen to Bud. P was pretty upset that the game didn't allow players to roll hit points or cast spells.

I know people have good stories about embarssing questions, ackward moments and responsible or irresponsible sexual choices. Dungeons and Dragon stories are okay too. Lets hear what you've got.