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Mom stops school sex survey
Last February, Arlene Tessitore learned that her two middle school daughters, ages 13 and 14, were given a survey in school that asked, among others, the following questions:
- Have you ever tried to kill yourself?
- Have you ever sniffed glue, or breathed the contents of spray cans, or inhaled any paints?
- With how many people have you had sexual intercourse?
- Have you ever had oral sex?
There were questions about condoms, birth control pills, and things too explicit to mention here.
Tessitore was upset, as were her daughters. The Fitchburg, Mass., school district hadn’t notified her about the survey and students weren’t given a choice about whether to take it or not.
When Tessitore complained to school officials, she was told that they hadn’t received her consent form, and if parental consent forms weren’t returned to the school, consent was assumed. They called it “passive consent.” But Tessitore said she never received such a form in the first place.
According to FOX News and the Worcester Telegram, the “Youth Risk Behavior Survey” was administered by a local social services agency, but originated with the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
With the help of the Virginia-based Rutherford Institute, a complaint was filed with the state Department of Education. Over the summer, the Fitchburg school district adopted a new policy for such cases. Signed parental consent will be required whenever schools collect personal information from students in eight specific areas, including sexual behavior, psychological problems of the student or the student’s family, and political beliefs. “Passive consent” will no longer be considered valid.
In addition, and perhaps most important, the “Youth Risk Behavior Survey” will no longer be given in the Fitchburg school district. The local newspaper reports that the only surveys Fitchburg students will take will pertain to after-school programs.
This may be a victory in just one school district, but it’s a victory because of just one mom. More power to her.
back to top45 Comments to “Mom stops school sex survey”
Good for her. I am tired of having to explain things to my child that I don’t think is age appropriate.
I am not one of those mother’s who has her head in the sand and is pretending her child is sheltered but I would prefer to handle things in my own way and at a pace I believe is best for her and her maturity level.
I like to think of myself as a realist when it comes to sex education, but it is my right as a mother to have those talks with her.
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Maybe her easily rattled teenage children (who are guaranteed to discuss sex with their friends at length) also cannot be trusted to deliver a school form to their parents?
No one should defend passive consent. But survey’s like this are important.
In my experience, kids act upset if their parents act upset because they look to their parents for social ques or they feel like they will get in trouble if they don’t. These girls very well could be sexually active, but I doubt this mom would know because she thinks talking about sex isn’t what? Letting them be teenage children? Preserving their innocence?
Passive consent is a dumb idea. It’s a good thing that it’s dead in this case, but not administering the survey at all is hindering the collection of stats and data necessary to help kids make better choices. That school district is going to lose out on money to run drug prevention programs AND ABSTINENCE programs because it’s choosing to not collect the data it would need to show it requires those funds.
There are sexually active kids at that school. And their are kids at that school who are using drugs. Better not to know?
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Kim, explain what? Teenage girls have sex. If you haven’t explained what oral sex is to them by the time they are 13 you’re failing to keep them safe and throwing them into a sexually charged environment misinformed and dependent on other equally misinformed teenagers for information that may prove life saving. Shame on that stupid woman!
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REDWAL, I HAVE discussed and explained those very things to my now 14 year old daughter. I have also explained that those nasty cold sores you see on some peoples mouths can also be found a little south of the neck. I have always had an open communication with her and I started off promising her I would always tell her the truth no matter what. I also made sure she understood that her friends might think they knew what they were talking about but they really didn’t know too much more than she did and if she wanted the straight scoop she needed to come to me again emphasizing that I would always tell her the truth. We handle things as they come up in conversation.
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Well then I am not sure what your problem would be with the school survey, those things are anonymous.
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Just the other night over Mexican food she was telling who was pregnant in the 9th grade and what boy had come to school telling everyone which STD he got from which girl.
As I listened and tried not to bury my face in my Chili Relleno, I also explained that she did not know what she was telling me was fact or rumor and to be very careful about repeating it to anyone other than me because some mean, vindictive person could be out spreading the same rumors about her and that was just one more good reason to walk the straight and narrow and keep your nose clean.
I would prefer to have these talks on an ongoing basis with my daughter than rely on a teacher whom I may or may not disagree with telling her the information
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She is MY child, NOT the school systems. I laughingly and lovingly tell her that God gave her to me for 18 short years to make a productive member of society and that right now we are working on remedial education.
The school system teaches them all about comdoms and such but gives the impression that you can live with herpes and AIDS with drug therapies. I want to be able to tell her that stuff is like bad luggage and is with you for life. You may not care right NOW that you have herpes but in 10 or 15 years when you give birth to your first child you may be upset if you have to have a C-Section because you happen to have active lesions when you go into labor. I want to teach her and show her to look at the actions she has today and the consequences it will have in several YEARS
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#3 “There are sexually active kids at that school. And their are kids at that school who are using drugs. Better not to know?”
So, you do know that these behaviors are happening even without the survey data to tell you so? Why then do you need the surveys to tell you what you already know?
We certainly do not need survey percentages to adequately and appropriately educate our children about the dangers of sex and drugs. Some people seem more concerned about data than about individual children. Thanks to the mom and others who genuinely care.
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REDWAL, surely you are not naive enough to believe those things are completely anonymous?
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#5 Redwal
“Well then I am not sure what your problem would be with the school survey, those things are anonymous.”
I wonder how the teachers would like taking that survey then handing it in to the administrators?
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This is NOT education. Schools must be grossly over-funded if this is the kind of crap they’re wasting their time on.
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#9 “surely you are not naive enough to believe those things are completely anonymous?”
Yes, some people are that naive. (But certainly not the teachers who would NOT do as Bob B suggests).
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I’m with Debra. Save the money for textbooks, etc.
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No if you tried to give that survey to the teachers the teacher’s union would be all upset over an invasion of privacy and calling it a witch hunt for teachers having sex with students and everything else.
Me personally, if I were presented with that survey I would fill in N/A on each question.
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And that is why my parents homeschooled me.
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This is yet another reason why we would NEVER let the public school have access to our children.
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We took such surveys in school, while I don’t agree with the “passive consent” bit I don’t see the issues with the survey itself.
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Frankensteingirls, that is because like it or not the rights and freedoms so many of us remember were already eroded by the time you came through school. This is an invasion of your privacy as well as mine. How would you like to answer on this forum how many sexual partners you have had? Same sex or opposite sex? Do you now or have you ever had an STD? Have you performed oral sex? Have you received oral sex? How old were you the first time you had sex?
Now, stop and think about it. Is ANY of this any of MY business?
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I feel it helps schools know what they are dealing with, it’s not like you are sitting in front of a teacher and verbally telling them about your sex life and glue sniffing habits.
If your just dying to know all my secrets (or not so secrets) then sure,ask away, but I’m assuming you were not really expecting an answer
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This ’survey’ is just another way of normalizing government interference in personal affairs in which they have no business. Schools are getting worse about pushing the political agenda of their (mostly leftist) teachers and administrators.
A boy in a Texas public school was recently suspended because during a classroom discussion he turned to his friend and said he is a Christian and thinks being a homosexual is wrong. First of all, the student was respectfully expressing his view 2) the teacher repeatedly actively pushed homosexuality on the class Neither teachers nor school administrators have any business proselytizing their politics and punishing those who disagree. And this decided fixation on all things sexual is not conducive to getting a good education.
We’re definitely NOT getting our moneys worth out of public education.
http://www.foxnews.com/us/2011/09/22/texas-school-punishes-boy-for-opposing-homosexuality/
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Too much information Frankie. NOT by business and if you don’t think your teachers looked through the forms and recognized handwriting and style of x’s or whatever you are kidding yourself.
This is private stuff. Only between you and the other person involved.
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The tests at our school were those one’s with bubbles if memory serves right.. I haven’t much else to say in the matter.
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Exactly, #15! And this is reason #503 why we’re homeschooling our kids! Though if we didn’t homeschool, they would not be going to a public institution, anyway.
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Redwal, first off, asking those questions on a survey hints to a kid that a “measurable” percentage of other kids are doing those things. And yes, it might well suggest things kids haven’t thought about or didn’t know about (remember that Marcia chose not to tell us everything listed); as a 13-year-old I didn’t know about oral sex, and had no NEED to know. No, failure to know about such things does NOT leave a kid vulnerable to such if he/she does know “private parts are private.” If you know to keep yourself covered and not to touch other people’s private parts, you have no need to know more specifically what isn’t permissible.
Notice that the survey also suggests such things as glue sniffing; that’s another thing I wouldn’t want my kid seeing as “normal enough to be on a survey.”
Go ahead and ask if he prefers hamburger or chicken, but please leave out hints that 13-year-olds are likely to be having oral sex. (Yes, they are; I know that. But I wouldn’t be telling my kid that. I sure wouldn’t be telling him it’s “normal” for a 13-year-old to do that, because it isn’t. If he wants to do so with his wife someday, fine; but it isn’t appropriate for a teenager, and surveys should not suggest it is!)
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I think that Frankie’s views show just how poorly we’ve educated our children on their rights and on privacy. She really doesn’t see anything wrong with it. Nor Redwal (who is also young, I believe).
The very things that our government was set up upon no longer have resonance with many of our young people. They don’t know why communism or socialism are bad choices. They don’t understand their privacy rights. They don’t even understand what should remain private or even what privacy is anymore!
As Debra pointed out, “This ’survey’ is just another way of normalizing government interference in personal affairs in which they have no business.” We make this sort of interference common place and expected and ACCEPTED. And, our children become sheep.
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I also never knew about oral sex or many other sexual things at 13. Neither did my friends.
This idea that it is all common knowledge and shared with everyone only exists because we have MADE it common knowledge and we share it with everyone.
Cheryl is right. All a child really needs to know is “private parts are private.”
Now, mind you, I have taught my teenaged children more than that, and have a great series of Christian books that I have them read that talk about most everything (from a Christian point of view.)
I am also most open to them approaching me, and they have done so on occasion.
But, this idea that “all kids are doing it” is just stupid and completely untrue. I work with teenagers. By far, they are NOT “all doing it.” And, yes, many of them are still relatively innocent in what they know. They don’t need some survey making them feel it is common place, or introducing them to aberrant behaviors as if “everyone does it…are you?”
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And, personally, I would prefer that the school just NOT tell my kids anything about sex. (As I homeschool, that won’t be happening!!)
I do a pretty good job with that. Most parents do okay. Why a teacher needs to do it, I can’t fathom.
And, don’t try to tell me it is to inform the poor kids so that they know that sex can make babies because their *evil* parents won’t tell them that.
1) My husband’s parents never told him a thing and he managed to figure it all out, mainly because he learned that you can use a library for learning almost anything.
2) Our STD rates, pregnancy rates, and everything else related have gone UP since all of this wonderful education…not down, as promised.
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Oh, and Redwal, “her easily rattled teenage children (who are guaranteed to discuss sex with their friends at length)” isn’t necessarily true, either. Some kids get through their teen years with very little discussion of sexual things with kids at school. Some teens actually find detailed discussions of that sort in bad taste.
Perhaps this is more likely to be true among virtuous girls than among any boys; but it nevertheless is true that not all teenagers discuss sex at length with their peers, and certainly they aren’t going to be discussing “types of sex that teenagers can do with each other before they’re married.” Some kids actually plan to–and do–wait till marriage for sex, and usually those kids aren’t all that inclined to look for chances to talk in titillating detail in the meantime. Those kids also aren’t going to be at all thrilled with their teachers forcing such thoughts upon them in this manner. I for one would have lost a lot of respect for such a teacher.
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While I think that Cheryl raises some significant issues, there is another side: how do we discover how many kids are engaging in risky or sexual behavior? To understand that in the population you do need to conduct some sort of survey, at least if you want to head off or remedy behavior. After all there’s a danger from knowing too little, as well.
And consider this, how do you do youth ministry if you have only anecdotal information about teens? How do we know that our messages are on track? How do we know that programs are working? All these ask for some sort of metric, some measurement. If all you have are pregnancies,say, you are almost certainly underestimating sexual behavior, but by how much?
So consider this a vote for surveys.
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Harris, yes, survey data is “useful.” But given a choice between asking personal questions without parental permission and failing to know “useful” information about today’s teens, I’d opt for letting kids be under their parents’ authority and protection. Questions that fall under “none of your business” should not be asked of kids without parental consent–and certainly must not be mandatory. Our “need to know” isn’t great enough to justify that.
And BTW, surveys won’t tell us “if our messages are on track.” They might very well tell us useful information such as “Kids who are claiming to be abstinent are very likely to be engaging in oral sex, but they don’t consider it sex,” and that is useful information. But a survey of (say) 13-year-olds in Dallas will tell us what 13-year-olds in Dallas said two years ago, or however long ago the survey was done (seeing these things rarely release results very quickly), not whether teens in one’s own group are understanding what one is saying.
And looking to survey data to help youth program effectiveness ultimately misses the heart of the matter on at least two essential points: (1) Ultimately it is parents, not schools and not youth groups, to whom God has entrusted teenagers and (2) Those who are discipling teens, whether they are the teens’ parents or other adults, need to know their own kids more than they know “the statistics.” Discipleship is ultimately one on one, not numbers.
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But Harris, why is it the business of the government?
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#2 Redwal
“…the “Youth Risk Behavior Survey” was administered by a local social services agency, but originated with the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.”
This did not come from Congress, but from a government agency. An unaccountable government agency! (What a TEA Party meme! They must have invented the idea. “I’m from the government and I’m here to help.” )
“Maybe her easily rattled teenage children (who are guaranteed to discuss sex with their friends at length) also cannot be trusted to deliver a school form to their parents?”
No, teenage children often cannot be trusted to bring home papers from school. Our three brought home the first paper of the year but we never saw another one. After handing out papers to go home the last 10 minutes of the last class of the day, I always went around the room when the students had gone home and picked up at least 30% of those same papers.
“That school district is going to lose out on money to run drug prevention programs AND ABSTINENCE programs because it’s choosing to not collect the data it would need to show it requires those funds.”
So, only schools with lots of sex or drug use going on get these funds? How much is enough? Where is the line drawn? If the CDC&P doesn’t give out money, the school won’t teach about it? Drug use and sex is not covered in the Science/Health class?
Besides all that, kids never lie about anything, especially sex and drug use, now do they? No peer pressure to make up stuff. None of them ever showed their paper to their friend sitting next to them. None of them would ever try to peek at their neighbor’s paper and then tell about it.
What about the kids who can’t read the questionnaire? Do they ask their friend to help them with the questions? Ask the teacher for help?
“Teacher, what does oral sex mean?”
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NJLawyer, I would think it more the business of those working in public health.
If you want to have cost-effective programs you will want some sense of what the problems are. When we don’t have data, then the health problems come first and we have to work backwards or use secondary data to fill in our gaps of knowledge. As in the early days of the AIDS epidemic, without knowledge the medical field was playing catch up. Data lets us respond more effectively.
That’s the broad case for surveys. More to the case, I share many of the same thoughts that Cheryl expressed — my concern here is that of a “baby and bathwater” sort.
Last, I think too, there is a trade off here between privacy and the utility of information. We may want to draw the line at some sorts of privacy, recognizing that it limits some other kinds of health initiatives. This is clearly the case when it comes to adolescent sexuality, as Cheryl makes clear.
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Our ancestors would have been shocked and disgusted that we allow our privacy to be thus invaded. They would not believe that we would willingly share such intimate information with strangers.
I’m with them!
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It is absolutely ludicrous to assume one needs a survey like this to do youth ministry. How about building relationships and teaching what the bible has to say about life? Sex is a part of life and will come up. The bible has a lot to say about it and you need no survey to teach it.
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As a teacher, I would not administer such a survey to my students. It is not my business. It is my business to set a good example for them, to use materials in class that present good examples and promote moral behavior, to correct in-class and at-school behavior that is inappropriate, explaining why.
Also, I can back Bob Buckles up. I am surprised by the numbers of papers, books, pens, and pencils I can collect in my classroom over the course of the day. I have seen students drop class notes in the trash on the way out of the room (it makes passing the test very difficult.) High school children cannot usually be trusted to take things up or to do homework with integrity.
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“But survey’s like this are important.”
You honestly expect teenagers to tell the truth on such a survey?
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It would be ideal if all parents were responsible and instructed their kids and were able to learn and anonymously report the numbers of sexually active teens to someone. But they are not and everyone here knows that.
It would be nice if the behaviors involved did not affect others, or didn’t have consequences beyond age 18.
But none of those is true.
So I think the surveys are necessary, and like any government program, may not be appropriate for all students or may make their parents uncomfortable.
I think that the goals, to learn and to protect everybody, are worth it and that almost all reasonable parents will see that. Heck even the kids should.
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just a few comments
passive consent is not consent
as bob and sylvie point out forms rarely make it home the first time ou
most surveys are now don online and thus are more or less anoymous
I know data collection is something education departments want in order to justify various educaiton programs but surveys filled out by middle school kids should never be taken seriously. Some students may not understand the terms — I’ve had students asked me about various drugs while taking surveys. In other cases students will rush through the survey so they can have free time on the computers. Or finally there’s always some kids who will delibrately lie and “admit” to committing every act listed or using every drug listed
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Surveys like this take so much for granted, the first being that students will give accurate information. The kind of data that these surveys gather do not in any way impact the quality of a child’s education. Since they are anonymous, how does the system get help for a troubled child? Dealing with these issues is not a One Size Fits All scenario. And I agree that these questions are very personal and invasive.
Schools should not be viewed as factories, children are not widgets, and scattergun surveys do not provide accurate ‘quality control’.
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We are approaching a condition wherein it now very close to child abuse for a parent to let their children attend a public school in the first place.
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HRW,
The voice of wisdom on this thread. He obviously has been around real middle school kids.
I’d completely forgotten about those things, but it is true. I had friends who would have lied and admitted to having done ALL of the things, and, of course, other friends who would have lied and claimed they’d done none of them.
And, yes, some kids will answer anything (even all one letter, or make a pretty pattern–I had another friend who liked to make such patterns when she hadn’t studied), in order to finish quickly for more free time.
There’s nothing a middle school kid likes more than messing with the system.
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The system has no business trafficing in such material and asking children such questions in the name of education in the first place in public schools. Add to that, it does not create reliable information.
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Joel Mark (41): We are approaching a condition wherein it now very close to child abuse for a parent to let their children attend a public school in the first place.
Frank: “Very close”?
Where do you place the line?
And when do you suppose we’ll cross it?
Have you heard of the new Christian film “IndoctriNation”?
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Simple as that? We will homeschool our now 5 month old son. Public schools have been mismanaged for decades. I feel for the majority of children who come from broken homes and attend public schools. It is a shame and a disgrace to our country. Parents, could you PLEASE RAISE YOUR KIDS? AND PLEASE USE COMMON SENSE WHILE DOING IT? If not you are only aiding in the Devil’s plan and his scheme to destroy our neighborhoods, schools, country, and lives!
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