Saucy savagery

Kids these days, ya know what I mean?

Wiser heads than mine have commented on the laziness, disrespectfulness, and general dissipation of youth.  Here's a sampler:

• Parents themselves were often the cause of many difficulties.  They frequently failed in their obvious duty to teach self-control and discipline to their own children.

• We defy anyone who goes about with his eyes open to deny that there is, as never before, an attitude on the part of young folk which is best described as grossly thoughtless, rude, and utterly selfish.

• The children now love luxury; they have bad manners, contempt for authority; they show disrespect for elders and love chatter in place of exercise.  Children are now tyrants, not the servants of their households.  They no longer rise when elders enter the room.  They contradict their parents, chatter before company, gobble up dainties at the table, cross their legs, and tyrannize their teachers.

• Never has youth been exposed to such dangers of both perversion and arrest as in our own land and day.  Increasing urban life with its temptations, prematurities, sedentary occupations, and passive stimuli just when an active life is most needed, early emancipation and a lessening sense for both duty and discipline, the haste to know and do all befitting man's estate before its time, the mad rush for sudden wealth and the reckless fashions set by its gilded youth--all these lack some of the regulatives they still have in older lands with more conservative conditions.

• Youth were never more saucy -- never more savagely saucy -- as now... the ancient are scorned, the honourable are condemned, and the magistrate is not dreaded.

• Our sires' age was worse than our grandsires'.  We, their sons, are more worthless than they; so in our turn we shall give the world a progeny yet more corrupt.

• [Young people] are high-minded because they have not yet been humbled by life, nor have they experienced the force of circumstances…  They think they know everything, and are always quite sure about it.

Of course, I haven't told you where these quotes come from. In order:

• from an editorial in the Leeds Mercury, 1938

• from an editorial in the Hull Daily Mail, 1925

• Kenneth John Freeman, Cambridge University, 1907

• Granville Stanley Hall, The Psychology of Adolescence, 1904

• Thomas Barnes, The Wise Man's Forecast Against the Evil Time, 1624

• Horace, Odes, Book III, 20 B.C.E.

• Aristotle, 4th century B.C.E.

So yeah.  Adults saying "kids these days" has a long, inglorious history.  (Nota bene: the third quote, from Kenneth Freeman, has often been misattributed to Socrates, but it seems pretty unequivocal that Freeman was the originator.)

Jan Miense Molenaar, Children Making Music (ca. 1630) [Image is in the Public Domain]

I can say from my admitted sample-size-of-one that "kids these days" are pretty much the same as they were when I first started teaching 35 long years ago.  Throughout my career there were kind ones and bullies, intelligent and not-so-much, hard-working and not-so-much, readers and non-readers, honest and dishonest.  Yes, a lot of the context has changed; just the access to, and sophistication of, technology has solved a whole host of problems and created a whole host of other ones, but isn't that always the way?  In my far-off and misspent youth, adults railed against rock music and long hair in much the same way that they do today about cellphones and social media, and with about as much justification.  Yes, there are kids who misuse social media and have their noses in their SmartPhones 24/7, but the vast majority handle themselves around these devices just fine -- same as most of my generation didn't turn out to be drug-abusing, illiterate, disrespectful dropouts.

This comes up because of a study in Science Advances by John Protzko and Jonathan Schooler, called "Kids These Days: Why the Youth of Today Seem Lacking."  And its unfortunate conclusion -- unfortunate for us adults, that is -- is that the sense of today's young people being irresponsible, disrespectful, and lazy is mostly because we don't remember how irresponsible, disrespectful, and lazy we were when we were teenagers.  And before you say, "Wait a moment, I was a respectful and hard-working teenager" -- okay, maybe.  But so are many of today's teenagers.  If you want me to buy that we're in a downward spiral, you'll have to convince me that more teenagers back then were hard-working and responsible, and that I simply don't believe.

And neither do Protzko and Schooler.

So the whole thing hinges more on idealization of the past, and our own poor memories, than on anything real.  I also suspect that a good many of the older adults who roll their eyes about "kids these days" don't have any actual substantive contact with young people, and are getting their impressions of teenagers from the media -- which certainly doesn't have a vested interest in portraying anyone as ordinary, honest, and law-abiding.

Oh, and another thing.  What really gets my blood boiling is the adults who on the one hand snarl about how complacent and selfish young people are -- and then when young people rise up and try to change things, such as Greta Thunberg and the activists from Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School, they say, "Wait, not like that."  What, you only accept youth activism if it supports the status quo?

All well and good for kids to have opinions, until they start contradicting the opinions of adults, seems like.

Anyhow, I'm an optimist about today's youth.  I saw way too many positive things in my years as a high school teacher to feel like this is going to be the generation that trashes everything through irresponsibility and disrespect for tradition.  And if after reading this, you're still in any doubt about that, I want you to think back on your own teenage years, and ask yourself honestly if you were as squeaky-clean as you'd like people to believe.

Or were you -- like the youth in Aristotle's day -- guilty of thinking you knew everything, and being quite sure about it?

****************************************

Canine teenagers

I love my dogs to pieces, but sometimes they drive me up a tree.

Especially our three-year-old pittie, Guinness.  He's sweet, cuddly, affectionate, playful... and willful, stubborn, mischievous, and frequently a complete pain in the ass.

The issue usually is that we're not giving him our undivided attention 24/7/365.  If you can imagine.  Monsters that we are, there are times when we don't want to play fetch with him or pet him, or when we might have other things we need to do.  When this happens, he usually finds some way of getting a rise out of us, like picking up a shoe and walking off with it, swiping something from the coffee table, or dragging a piece of firewood out of the wood cradle next to the stove.  If just taking it doesn't work, he proceeds to chew up whatever he stole, which is not a big deal if it's an empty cardboard box, but is a somewhat bigger deal if it's the TV remote.

Our usual strategy is to give him lots of one-on-one fun time in the afternoon, with the hope that he'll be so tired he'll stay out of trouble during the evening.  This works maybe fifty percent of the time.  When it doesn't, we fall back on the dubious strategy of chasing him around the house yelling, "DAMMIT GUINNESS GIVE THAT BACK."  Which, of course, means that he won -- we're giving him attention, and even better, playing with him, which is clearly how he interprets our running and flailing our arms.  "You are such a bad dog" usually elicits nothing more than a tail wag, because he knows how to game the system, and that's much better than being a Good Boy.

"I'm ready for my close-up, Mr. DeMille."

Well, because of a paper this week in Biology Letters of the Royal Society, I found out there's a good reason why Guinness acts the way he does.

He's a teenager.

In "Teenage Dogs?  Evidence for Adolescent-Phase Conflict Behaviour and an Association Between Attachment to Humans and Pubertal Timing in the Domestic Dog," animal behaviorists Lucy Asher (University of Newcastle), Gary England and Naomi Harvey (Nottingham University), and Rebecca Sommerville (University of Edinburgh) tell us that adolescent dogs go through a lot of the same sorts of annoying stuff that adolescent humans do -- oppositional behavior, selective hearing, and outright defiance, especially of the owner/parents.

The authors write:

...[W]hen dogs reached puberty, they were less likely to follow commands given by their carer, but not by others.  The socially-specific nature of this behaviour in dogs (reduced obedience for their carer only) suggests this behaviour reflects more than just generalized hormonal, brain and reward pathway changes that happen during adolescence.  In parts of this study, the ‘other’ person was a guide dog trainer who may have been more capable of getting a dog to perform a command; however, the results are consistent with parts of the study when the ‘other’ person was an experimenter without the experience of dog training.  We also find the reduction in obedience to the carer and not an ‘other’ person to be specific to the dog's developmental stage and more pronounced in dogs with insecure attachments, which is not easily explained by differences in dog training ability between the carer and other.

I find this fascinating, because it completely parallels my memory of parenting my sons when they were teenagers.  Both of them went through the eye-rolling, good-lord-my-parents-are-stupid phase of development, but while they were in that, we still got consistent stellar reports about their behavior at school.  "They're so sweet and cooperative," their teachers said, over and over.  "Always the first ones to volunteer to help out."

After verifying that yes, we were actually talking about the same teenage boys, Carol and I would just shake our heads and comment that it was better they take their adolescent angst out on us than on their teachers, who heaven knows have enough of that stuff to deal with.  Even if that meant that our request to load the dishwasher was treated as if it were equivalent to turning them into galley slaves and forcing them to row to Scotland.

But it's amazing that dogs go through the same phase.  Makes you wonder what other sorts of parallels they are.  And it gives me some hope that Guinness will grow out of his frustrating, attention-seeking behavior.  Although it must be said that three years old is definitely out of puppyhood, and we're still waiting for improvement.

Maybe it's partly his breed.  One of my friends who is a dog lover came over shortly after we got him (he's a shelter rescue, the best kind of dog to get).  She was greeted enthusiastically by him, and she said, "Oh, a pittie mix!  I love those.  How old is he?"

"A little over a year," I said.

"You do know that pitties only grow a brain when they're four years old, right?"

That was two years ago, and I'm not seeing much sign of it.  Maybe it's a sudden thing, you know?  Maybe next March, when he's three-years-and-eleven-months old, he'll get this shocked look on his face as his skull fills up with actual brain tissue, and immediately he'll start acting like a Good Boy, and perhaps even apologize for all of the household items he's chewed up.

Look, it could happen, okay?  Don't burst my bubble.  At least not until I find my left shoe.

*************************************

This week's Skeptophilia book-of-the-week is one that should be a must-read for everyone -- not only for the New Yorkers suggested by the title.  Unusual, though, in that this one isn't our usual non-fiction selection.  New York 2140, by Kim Stanley Robinson, is novel that takes a chilling look at what New York City might look like 120 years from now if climate change is left unchecked.

Its predictions are not alarmism.  Robinson made them using the latest climate models, which (if anything) have proven to be conservative.  She then fits into that setting -- a city where the streets are Venice-like canals, where the subways are underground rivers, where low-lying areas have disappeared completely under the rising tides of the Atlantic Ocean -- a society that is trying its best to cope.

New York 2140 isn't just a gripping read, it's a frighteningly clear-eyed vision of where we're heading.  Read it, and find out why The Guardian called it "a towering novel about a genuinely grave threat to civilisation."

[Note: if you purchase this book using the image/link below, part of the proceeds goes to support Skeptophilia!]

Saucy savagery

Kids these days, ya know what I mean?

Wiser heads than mine have commented on the laziness, disrespectfulness, and general dissipation of  youth.  Here's a sampler:

• Parents themselves were often the cause of many difficulties.  They frequently failed in their obvious duty to teach self-control and discipline to their own children.
• We defy anyone who goes about with his eyes open to deny that there is, as never before, an attitude on the part of young folk which is best described as grossly thoughtless, rude, and utterly selfish.
• The children now love luxury; they have bad manners, contempt for authority; they show disrespect for elders and love chatter in place of exercise.  Children are now tyrants, not the servants of their households.  They no longer rise when elders enter the room.  They contradict their parents, chatter before company, gobble up dainties at the table, cross their legs, and tyrannize their teachers.
• Never has youth been exposed to such dangers of both perversion and arrest as in our own land and day.  Increasing urban life with its temptations, prematurities, sedentary occupations, and passive stimuli just when an active life is most needed, early emancipation and a lessening sense for both duty and discipline, the haste to know and do all befitting man's estate before its time, the mad rush for sudden wealth and the reckless fashions set by its gilded youth--all these lack some of the regulatives they still have in older lands with more conservative conditions.
• Youth were never more saucy -- never more savagely saucy -- as now...  the ancient are scorned, the honourable are condemned, and the magistrate is not dreaded.
• Our sires' age was worse than our grandsires'.  We, their sons, are more worthless than they; so in our turn we shall give the world a progeny yet more corrupt.
• [Young people] are high-minded because they have not yet been humbled by life, nor have they experienced the force of circumstances…  They think they know everything, and are always quite sure about it.

Of course, I haven't told you where these quotes come from. In order:

• from an editorial in the Leeds Mercury, 1938
• from an editorial in the Hull Daily Mail, 1925
• Kenneth John Freeman, Cambridge University, 1907
• Granville Stanley Hall, The Psychology of Adolescence, 1904
• Thomas Barnes, The Wise Man's Forecast Against the Evil Time, 1624
• Horace, Odes, Book III, 20 B.C.E.
• Aristotle, 4th century B.C.E.

So yeah.  Adults saying "kids these days" has a long, inglorious history.  (Nota bene: the third quote, from Kenneth Freeman, has often been misattributed to Socrates, but it seems pretty unequivocal that Freeman was the originator.)

Jan Miense Molenaar, Children Making Music (ca. 1630) [Image is in the Public Domain]

I can say from my admitted sample-size-of-one that "kids these days" are pretty much the same as they were when I first started teaching 32 long years ago.  There are kind ones and bullies, intelligent and not-so-much, hard-working and not-so-much, readers and non-readers, honest and dishonest.  Yes, a lot of the context has changed; just the access to, and sophistication of, technology has solved a whole host of problems and created a whole host of other ones, but isn't that always the way?  In my far-off and misspent youth, adults railed against rock music and long hair in much the same way that they do today about cellphones and social media, and with about as much justification.  Yes, there are kids who misuse social media and have their noses in their SmartPhones 24/7, but the vast majority handle themselves around these devices just fine -- same as most of my generation didn't turn out to be drug-abusing, illiterate, disrespectful dropouts.

This comes up because of a study that was published in Science Advances this week, by John Protzko and Jonathan Schooler, called "Kids These Days: Why the Youth of Today Seem Lacking."  And its unfortunate conclusion -- unfortunate for us adults, that is -- is that the sense of today's young people being irresponsible, disrespectful, and lazy is mostly because we don't remember how irresponsible, disrespectful, and lazy we were when we were teenagers.  And before you say, "Wait a moment, I was a respectful and hard-working teenager" -- okay, maybe.  But so are many of today's teenagers.  If you want me to buy that we're in a downward spiral, you'll have to convince me that more teenagers back then were hard-working and responsible, and that I simply don't believe.

And neither do Protzko and Schooler.

So the whole thing hinges more on idealization of the past, and our own poor memories, than on anything real.  I also suspect that a good many of the older adults who roll their eyes about "kids these days" don't have any actual substantive contact with young people, and are getting their impressions of teenagers from the media -- which certainly doesn't have a vested interest in portraying anyone as ordinary, honest, and law-abiding.

Oh, and another thing.  What really gets my blood boiling is the adults who on the one hand snarl about how complacent and selfish young people are -- and then when young people rise up and try to change things, such as Greta Thunberg and the activists from Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School, they say, "Wait, not like that."  What, you only accept youth activism if it supports the status quo?

All well and good for kids to have opinions, until they start contradicting the opinions of adults, seems like.

Anyhow, I'm an optimist about today's youth.  I saw way too many positive things in my years as a high school teacher to feel like this is going to be the generation that trashes everything through irresponsibility and disrespect for tradition.  And if after reading this, you're still in any doubt about that, I want you to think back on your own teenage years, and ask yourself honestly if you were as squeaky-clean as you'd like people to believe.

Or were you -- like the youth in Aristotle's day -- guilty of thinking you knew everything, and being quite sure about it?

*****************************

This week's Skeptophilia book-of-the-week is from an author who has been a polarizing figure for quite some time; the British evolutionary biologist Richard Dawkins.  Dawkins has long been an unapologetic critic of religion, and in fact some years ago wrote a book called The God Delusion that caused thermonuclear-level rage amongst the Religious Right.

But the fact remains that he is a passionate, lucid, and articulate exponent of the theory of evolution, independent of any of his other views.  This week's book recommendation is his wonderful The Greatest Show on Earth, which lays out the evidence for biological evolution in a methodical fashion, in terminology accessible to a layperson, in such a way that I can't conceive how you'd argue against it.  Wherever you fall on the spectrum of attitudes toward evolution (and whatever else you might think of Dawkins), you should read this book.  It's brilliant -- and there's something eye-opening on every page.

[Note: if you purchase this book using the image/link below, part of the proceeds goes to support Skeptophilia!]

Take my hand

Today I'm going to take a detour from my usual fare and tell you about a former student of mine, a young man named Justin.

I first met Justin in my Critical Thinking class, almost two years ago.  He struck me right away as the thoughtful type (in both senses of the word).  He was quiet, friendly, and kind, and always was the first one to laugh at my jokes (which may speak to his kindness as well).  As the semester progressed, he was more and more willing to contribute to class discussions, and what he said never failed to be articulate, interesting, and well-considered.

He tuned in right away on my obsession with UFOs and Bigfoot (not that hard to discern, really, considering the various Roswell-and-Sasquatch-related paraphernalia strewn about my classroom).  He started ferreting out good examples of goofy paranormal claims -- I used more than one of his finds as a basis for a Skeptophilia post -- and I still remember when he took me up on my offer to the class of an optional assignment to use PhotoShop to make the most convincing fake paranormal photograph they could.  His submission -- a wildly creepy double exposure that looked like a ghost floating over a country road -- stayed on my wall for the rest of the year.

So I was glad to see that he'd signed up for my AP Biology class this past school year.  He continued in much the same fashion, participating in a quiet, understated sort of way, coming in early to discuss the latest science fiction movies, asking good questions.  Not a boy who was a splashy presence, but someone who was steady, smart, and pleasant, the kind of student most teachers would love to fill a class with.

Justin graduated from high school six days ago.  I saw him that Thursday evening, laughing with some friends in their caps and gowns, and he asked me to take their picture with his cellphone.

That was the last time I saw him.  Three days ago, Justin committed suicide.

My first thought, when a colleague called me up at 9:30 Monday night to tell me the news, was, "How could I have missed the signs?"  Justin never exhibited the slightest sign of depression to me.  No moodiness, no sudden disinterest in classwork, no distancing himself from friends.  All year long, he was the same constant, easy-going person, almost always with a smile on his face.

Of course, I know from first hand experience that my reaction was ridiculous.  Since his death, I've heard from a couple of colleagues that he'd had bouts of depression, had contemplated suicide, but in the past months had seemed so much better.  One friend, who was especially close to him, said, "I honestly thought he was in the clear."

So did we all.  But we depressives are chameleons.  It's what we do best.  And I use "we" deliberately; I've had serious depression and anxiety as long as I can remember, and until I went public with it -- I first blogged on my own personal struggles about four years ago -- I'd bank on the fact that no one knew.  I never missed work, never seemed down, never did a sudden radio silence.  If anything, people described me as dependable and reliable, and most of all, competent.  I never acted as if I needed help.

The truth, of course, is that a good part of the time, it was a struggle even getting myself to work.  Once there, I put the happy-mask on -- because I was expected to.  Taking charge is part of my job.  Even when I was at my lowest, during the breakup of my (all things considered) disaster of a first marriage, hardly anyone knew what was going on.  To admit it, in my depressive state, was somehow to give it more reality.  Easier to pretend it didn't exist, that my life was just hunky-dory, thank you very much.

So it's not to be wondered at that a lot of us didn't know what was going on with Justin.  Still... I wish I had.  Maybe had someone known, we could have made a difference.  I know hindsight is 20/20, and all that, but suicides always leave the survivors playing out what-if scenarios, as pointless as they are, as unfair as they are to everyone concerned.

But it does highlight that it's absolutely critical we look after each other.  Our society has taught us that going it alone is some kind of virtue, that to ask for help is to appear weak or needy.  We pretend we're fine when we're falling apart, and our closest friends often don't know.

So reach out to the people around you.  Treat people with compassion, even those who don't seem to deserve it; sometimes those are the ones who need it most.  Don't forget to check in with the strong ones, the competent ones, the quiet-but-steady ones, who may not be showing you what they're really feeling -- not until you push them to dig deeper.

And don't forget the Suicide Prevention Lifeline Number, 1-800-273-8255.  If you're hurting, and it seems like you can't keep going, give them a call.  If you have a friend or family member who is in crash-and-burn mode and don't know how to help them, give them a call.  Don't go it alone.  You don't need to.

Because -- as I found out in my case, having attempted suicide twice, once when I was 17 and once when I was 20, when things looked completely hopeless -- the only thing suicide ensures is that things won't get better.  Whatever's gone wrong for you, you can survive it, if you're willing to put out your hand and say, "Please help me up."

[Image is in the Public Domain]

I always try to remember the adage that a family friend told me when I was six.  I was whinging about some classmate that I didn't like, and this friend -- instead of commiserating -- bowled me over by saying, "Always treat people with more kindness than you think you need to, because everyone you meet is fighting a terrible battle that you know nothing about."  I've never forgotten it.

And to Justin, who lost his terrible battle three days ago: I will always remember you as a kind young man with a fine mind and a ready smile.  I, and your friends and family, will miss you dearly.  I wish I could have helped you, but perhaps, if your life and death push someone else to reach out for help, it won't have entirely been in vain.

******************************

This week's book recommendation is the biography of one of the most inspirational figures in science; the geneticist Barbara McClintock.  A Feeling for the Organism by Evelyn Fox Keller not only explains to the reader McClintock's groundbreaking research into how transposable elements ("jumping genes") work, but is a deft portrait of a researcher who refused to accept no for an answer.  McClintock did her work at a time when few women were scientists, and even fewer were mavericks who stood their ground and went against the conventional paradigm of how things are.  McClintock was one -- and eventually found the recognition she deserved for her pioneering work with a Nobel Prize.

Puritans in charge

H. L. Mencken once quipped that "Puritanism [is] the haunting fear that someone, somewhere, may be happy."  We always associate Puritanism with the 17th century, with funny hats with buckles and dark clothing and women in modest dresses -- and the torture and execution of witches.  In other words, as a thing of the past.

[image courtesy of the Wikimedia Commons]

However, there is a deep streak of Puritanism in our culture still.  The simultaneous obsession with and revulsion over sex in the United States is peculiar, to say the least.  You can't go to a mall without being accosted by images of nearly naked models of both genders in places like Victoria's Secret and Abercrombie & Fitch.  Movies and television are full of references to sex, both oblique and overt.  And yet a lot of the time, we alternately act as if sex is shameful or depraved, or as if it simply doesn't exist.

And in no realm does our split attitude show as clearly as in how we educate children about their own bodies.  Any time someone proposes frank, realistic sex education in schools, parents have a meltdown about the erosion of morality in the United States.  As if their children won't become sexually active unless they find out about it in class.  As if there weren't an inverse correlation between teen birth rates and the degree to which birth control, HIV prevention, and general sex education is addressed in the schools.  As if abstinence-only education programs haven't been shown over and over to be completely ineffective at reducing teen pregnancy and the incidence of STDs.

Ignore it and it won't happen, seems to be the usual approach.

Of course, when simply ignoring sex doesn't work, the modern-day Puritans choose instead to go on the offense.  Witness the recent push by lawmakers in Kansas to prosecute teachers who "expose students to material of a sexual nature."

We're not talking about pornography here.  The whole thing got started by Representative Mary Pilcher-Cook, who flipped her frilly white bonnet when she found out that there was a poster displayed in Shawnee Mission High School that had the question, "How do people express their sexual feelings?" and listed "oral sex" as one possibility.  Pilcher-Cook said, in a quote that I am not making up, "Children could have been irreparably harmed by viewing this poster... because it affects their brains."

"State laws should protect parents’ rights to safeguard our children against harmful materials, especially in schools," Pilcher-Cook went on to say.  "The fact that the poster was posted without fear is a problem in and of itself."

Phillip Cosby, head of the American Family Association of Kansas and Missouri, was quick to jump to her defense.  With respect to children finding out about sex, he said, "It’s a tsunami.  And maybe we’re the Dutch boy who’s just putting their finger in the dam."  He went on to say that he can't even watch a Kansas City Royals game with his grandchildren without their seeing a commercial for erectile dysfunction.

So how is that a problem, Mr. Cosby?  When my sons were young, I can see the conversation going this way:

Television commercial:  "See your doctor if you think this medication might help your erectile dysfunction." 

My kid:  "Dad, what's 'erectile dysfunction?'" 

Me:  It's a problem some older guys get, where the penis doesn't work as it should.  There's a medication that can help." 

My kid:  "Oh.  Okay.  When's the baseball game going to be back on?"

Yup.  They'd clearly have been scarred for life.

It isn't that I'm not cognizant of the importance of a child's age with regards to what sort of material they're exposed to.  With sexuality, as with most things, there is a point where children become capable of understanding, and it's not a good idea to push ideas on kids for which they're not emotionally ready.  But we seem to have no particular problem with trusting educators to make those judgments in other realms, do we?

No one is assigning Macbeth to nine-year-olds, for example.

But there's something different about sex, apparently, that makes it taboo at any age.  Instead of being honest with our children about their own bodies, we're teaching them that their feelings and desires are inherently shameful.

I still remember a couple of years ago in my neuroscience class, when we were talking about neurotransmitters.  I brought up endorphin, which is a neurotransmitter associated with pleasurable feelings of all sorts, and I mentioned that endorphin is released in the brain during orgasm.

One student looked a little taken aback.  I asked him what was up.  He said, blushing scarlet, "I've never heard a teacher use that word before."

This kid, by the way, was in 11th grade.

Why shouldn't we be honest with kids about their bodies as a source of pleasure and as a way to connect with their partners, and not just as a tool for reproduction?  When we take a step past the focus on men and women as baby-making machines, it's usually only to warn students about the risks.  Only rarely do we make any effort to give teenagers a well-rounded view of sexuality.  How do we expect young people to approach sex in a respectful and responsible fashion when we won't even bring up the topic?  And considering the fact that teenagers are usually hyper-focused on sex anyhow, isn't it better to discuss it openly rather than pretend that if we ignore it, it'll go away?

But the undercurrent of Puritanism that still exists in the United States makes it unlikely that such an approach will be realized any time soon.  If we're still at the point when a state legislator wants to have criminal charges levied against a teacher for mentioning oral sex, we have a very long way to go.