http://www.cracked.com/article_21952_5- ... ldren.html Focus: What were some absurd things you were taught in school? Any ridiculous education programs or methods? I remember sitting in a DARE class in which Officer Dave reached back into hallowed antiquity to pull out a curriculum focusing on such gems as: "Madonna is the Anti-Christ" "ACDC stands for Anti-Christ, Devil Child and are renowned Satanists" "Metallica also worships the devil." So, after that when Officer Dave said "marijuana is one of the most deadly substances police officers deal with", collectively a group of nine-year-olds went "ehhh....this guy's full of shit". Another one was in our sex-ed course, required of outgoing seniors. Sitting in that class as a senior, after a good three years of sexual activity, having an exasperated basketball coach try and convince us "abstinence is the only solution to pregnancy and STD's". "Condoms are ONLY effective 99.9% of the time when used appropriately". So, why bother with them, huh coach? I'll just rely on the Jesus method of pulling out and praying.
I remember questioning the message of the DARE programs even in 5th grade. I think they were noble in intent, but bizarre in execution. Im not a drug user in any regard (including weed), but the spurious "facts" you saw in those videos are similar to what you see today in the anti-smoking ads. I dont remember sex ed class very much, but I do remember my teacher clipping his toe nails at his desk while the videos were playing. Everything I needed to know about my body I learned from this video anyway: NSFW Bump.
I went to Catholic School, that should be enough said right there. We were taught "natural family planning" NFP for short of course. Apparently the gist of this bullshit was that if you time your sex life exactly with her cycle she will not get pregnant and that for some reason this is more natural than putting a jimmy on. I use to love how they tried to explain why they thought condoms were unnatural. Something about preventing the semen from reaching her egg makes God sad or something. Apparently pulling out is different somehow. I think the Church really is after a numbers game. More offspring, more congregants, more power. Then the abortion thing was just strange all around. They gave us all the typical abortion talks and showed us really gruesome images. Seems kind of irresponsible to show some of these things to 14 year olds but...yea.... They never really talked about drugs too much. They weren't too bothered with high school kids going out and snorting adderall at lunch, they were much more worried about our sex lives.
You forgot the most important part. More money. And as far as them being more interested in students sex lives, well, lets just say they're *cough* living vicariously through the students *cough*.
"One liquid gram of LSD is potent enough to addict 25,000 people". That one sticks with me to this day. Wrap your mind around that. God loves grainy, old school anti-drug videos. Jesus they were hilarious even if you didn't know anything about drugs. Marijuana is addictive and you'll steal money for it from your parents insulin money. Mushrooms cause violent episodes of psychosis. Cocaine is 100% addictive on the first try. They were SERIOUS. All of that vilifying and none of it worked. We all went out and did drugs anyway. If they wanted to deter kids from doing them just show them photos of ugly people and tell them that's who you'll hook up with while high. I am thankful I'm from a place where they only teach ONE kind of evolution, the evidence-based kind.
Our sex ed classes were more about how our bodies worked. I remember having a big poster and drawing fallopian tubes on it and labeling stuff. I don't know what it says about the class when all I distinctly remember is sitting in class one day (it was in the gallery of the auditorium) and out of the corner of my eye I saw this kid pick his nose. Okay, whatever. But he didn't get rid of it. He just rolled it between his fingers for the whole damn class. I kept checking out of the corner of my eye, wondering what the hell he was going to do with it because he just kept rolling and rolling. I think I'm throwing up a little in my mouth thinking about it. I just kept thinking "wow, that must be a really big booger if he can do that the whole class." God, what a gross kid. Oh, and our teacher was a lesbian and a field hockey coach (must..not..make..stereotype...joke...) and she got a call in class one day, hung up and said, "that was the office, they said they found my hymen on the hockey field." Sex Ed 101, Hicksville.
The only times drums were acceptable in music were in with a symphony, any music that has a rock beat if from the devil. If you kiss a girl before you get married you are going to hell. If women wear shorts that are above their knees they are harlots. There was no sex education for us just a list of things we were not allowed to do taught by the principle who was married but still having an affair with another married teacher.
This thread is where everyone complains about religious school and DARE. Gotcha. So my religious school once had an assembly to tell us that if administration was legally required to hire a gay person they'd shut the school down. This was 1995ish. Abstinence until marriage. Check. The healing properties of prayer. Check. In 5th grade ole teach popped open a book warning of satanic music and works. Madonna, The Beatles, Prince, and every rock band were listed. Every rock band. I recall The Who explicitly. I had no idea they worshiped the dark arts in such songs as Pinball Wizard. Who's Who? The devil, that is who. Lets not even get into the addictive properties of smoking marijuana cigarettes. You foolish fools. Nothing about pot brownies, so game on? I'll give them this. They had a hard science program. None of that creation crap in the texts. That school was designed to be as rigorous as college. Which is hilarious because at least once a year they'd invite the ass clown from non-accredited Bob Roberts butthole university to spend half a day shilling his shitty school.
Oh yeah, science. We were instructed that if you gave any credence to the possibility of evolution you were going to hell. I am pretty sure the science teacher was a member of the flat earth society.
Never had any of that crazy shit you guys are talking about, but what I do remember are the whacky safety videos we watched in grade 4 or 5. Stuff like "Hey Jimmy, be careful with that auger feeder on the farm, or you might lose your arm"... then they cut to Jimmy, a kid who lost his arm in an auger feeder, talking about how he played with the auger feeder and shouldn't have. Or "Hey Timmy, don't play on trains or you might lose your legs"... then they cut to Timmy, a kid who lost his legs by trying to jump onto a moving train, slipped, and sliced his legs off. More than anything, I was curious as hell how those kids survived the massive blood loss from losing those limbs.
Well, I was shown this as a kid. If you smoke marijuana, you'll become violent and cartoon characters will appear. What the fuck. How on Earth was anybody buying this? I understand the Reagan administration in particular was behind a lot of it. Jon shows this attitude in some of the games in arcades at the time: (You know, where kids got their drugs! And rock music!)
I had the Stranger Danger era as a kid. Every single adult that was not directly related to you wants to kidnap you to hold prisoner in their bilco door-accessed rape and murder chamber. If you see an adult, call the cops.
When I was school, the theory creationists were using was intelligent design. I would go to theology class and learn all about how everything is as science describes because God ordained it and made it that way. Fortunately in my Catholic school there were no hardcore earth is 2000 year old types. I had a friend that went to a Christian school in Dallas and the stuff they did really made my school look tame. My school did not lack for irony though. My junior year my principle tried to expel me for some bullshit. Its a super long story that I really don't give a fuck to try to explain anymore. The next year he died in a car accident on my birthday. Apparently he had gone to the strip club that Tuesday night, got shit faced and drove home. As he was driving home he fell asleep at the wheel and drove into the back on a semi. It turns out our principle had been frequenting strip clubs for quite some time and getting sloshed. There is a huge amount of Ted Haggardish irony there. So the man that tried to expel me died in a car crash a year later on my birthday....
Am I the only one here who had comprehensive sex ed? The 9th grade class was the best one (5th grade was the biological/anatomical stuff, and in 7th grade they just tried to make us afraid of STIs) and there was actually discussion about talking to your partner, deciding when you're ready to have sex, and minimizing risks. When Planned Parenthood came in, they talked about STI prevention for same sex couples as well as birth control, and we had people from the DV shelter come in to talk about power, control and abuse in dating relationships. Retrospectively, I guess that was unusual? Thinking back, I feel like the only thing I was really lied to about/mistaught in school was the treatment of Native Americans throughout US history. Like, in Germany you're not allowed to be a Holocaust denier, but when I was 6, they totally had us make pilgrim hats and headdresses out of construction paper at Thanksgiving.
I had a really awesome education, and I've never been more thankful to grow up where I did than once I went to college and started learning what other people's experiences we're like. (In junior year AP U.S we read Howard Zinn along with our textbook, for example.) So I don't have any complaints, but I did want to take the opportunity to ask everyone something. Did anyone else watch Chester the Cat? It was this super trippy cartoon of this big orange cat who had this lovely fluffy tail that all of the other (totally stoned) animals in the jungle (because he lived in the jungle for some reason) always wanted to touch. And Chester the Cat didn't want them to touch it but he was afraid to speak up about it. But then one day he gathered the courage and said I DON'T LIKE IT WHEN YOU TOUCH MY TAIL. We watched it every year through 5th grade and everyone assumed it was just as legendary everywhere else. But no one else has heard of Chester the Cat and no one has been able to find him online and now we're all wondering if some old hippie teacher in our district made it or something. But someone please tell me they've also watched Chester the Cat and are empowered to tell people not to touch their tail. This is very important to me.
Hey I think my school did quite a good job. I learned that rubbing one out is a sin that needs to be repented for. I learned that in Gods eyes there is no difference between getting a blow job and plowing a girl in the back of a van. I also learned that sex before marriage will send you to hell if you don't repent. I think that pretty much covers it. We also learned why IVF is immoral, that trying to avoid conception is a very serious sin, but I don't think we heard a word about STD's, so maybe they missed something here or there
Jesus, some of these stories make the rural West Virginia K-12 system I went through look progressive by comparison. Although, despite never being exposed to the Young Earth Creationism or the "rock & roll is the devil", I remember a high level of kooky ideas with the piles of clothes they had teaching Social Studies. Mostly it was about how the Civil War was about "states' rights" and not slavery, but one in particular still stands out - in the 10th grade, Mr. Quirk (yes, really) told us with all seriousness that he thought Hinckley actually had killed Reagan and that some mysterious "they" had replaced him with a double who served out his terms. I didn't have the presence of mind to ask whether it was the real Reagan or his double who was behind "Cartoon All-Stars to the Rescue."
Why doesn't it anger Americans more that many of the lessons and values you were taught about life were completely pulled out of a hypocrite's ass? It's no dumber than teaching kids that leprechauns and unicorns exist. You have the exact same amount of proof.