Adolescents talk about sex, not love

The Boston Herald


They are seventh and eighth graders, ages 11, 12 and 13. I teach them writing once a week, in an after-school program they have chosen to attend. They are bright kids, interested and interesting, but more important than smart, they're sweet. Half child, half teen, human beings brimming with potential.

In class last week I asked if they thought public schools should give out condoms. Eighteen of the 19 who responded said yes. Here's a sample of what they said:

"I think it is a good idea to distribute condoms throughout the school system," wrote an 11-year old. "The Magic Johnson issue has finally brought this out into the open...Condoms should be distributed through all high schools and junior highs by machines because it would be embarrassing to ask your teacher for a condom."

"I think condoms should be in school just in case any student might need them," wrote a 12-year-old. "They could be put in bathrooms in machines so that no one would be embarrassed about taking them."

"AIDS, if it happened to Magic can happen to YOU," wrote another. "So if you're going to you-know-what, make it safe. Use protection!"

"If people are going to have sex, then they should be protected. Some people might not have a way of getting condoms and if they don't have protection they could get AIDS or get pregnant. So I definitely think they should make condoms available at schools."

"If condoms are not distributed, there will be more teen pregnancies and the HIV virus."

"Condoms should be distributed in schools in vending machines. It's embarrassing enough to buy them publicly in drugstores. You walk into the store, pick up some condoms and when you get to the register, the clerk eyes you suspiciously. Next thing you know, you're carrying 20 pamphlets. Why do you think the pregnancy rate is so high?"

"Schools should have condoms because of what happens when people have sex. Sometimes you can get AIDS or make a girl who hasn't even graduated from high school pregnant. If condoms were sold in vending machines at school, the pregnancy rate would be lower."

"I think condoms should be distributed to students because I don't think people at the ages of 13 and 17 and 18 should get knocked up. I'm not saying the schools should have the machines or that students should have to go up to a school nurse. The schools should give ID cards to all students from grades 7-12. The students would use these ID cards at any drug store. The cashier would give the condoms to them, no questions asked. The cashier would mark down that the condoms were purchased and the town's school committee would pay for them."

Every one of these kids, kids who are just sponges, who aren't old enough to have formulated their own value systems, believes that the school owes them protection from pregnancy and AIDS, and that it is the duty of adults to provide this protection.

This is what kids 11, 12 and 13 have learned from us.

Not, don't do it. Not, this isn't a game.

Just be careful. Use condoms. Protect yourself.

Consider the ramifications of this message.

These children, who dress the same and wear their hair the same and talk the same to fit in with the crowd, because the crowd is god when you're young, now have this added pressure.

These children, who dress the same and talk the same to fit in with the crowd, now have this added pressure

It's okay to do it. Nothing will happen. We have condoms now. We're safe.

Not one of these 19 kids mentioned love. There was nothing about when you're in love, you're not thinking about AIDS. Or if someone has been going with a boy a long, long time and they love each other... The word love never appeared. Nor did "like" or boyfriend or girlfriend or sometimes.

"No one holds hands anymore," a friend's daughter away at college told her mother on the phone last week. "Everyone goes out on a date and `does it.' It's something that's expected."

It's something that will be expected at an even younger age once condoms are passed out in schools. For our children believe the lie we have told them. They believe in safe sex.

But the truth is that all sex, even the kind that doesn't infect or impregnate, leaves something behind. The HIV virus kills the body, so we suggest ways to protect against it. But something else, something unnamed, ravages the soul. And what do we do to protect our children from this?

Absolutely nothing at all.