The SexuaB Revolufion Hits Junior High
The kids are doing more than baring bellies: They’re shocking
adults with their anything-goes behavior
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Specialfor USA TADAY
icture the mating rites of middie-schoolers. Perhaps you
irnagine hand- holding and first kisses, girls trying out
eye shadow, boys sneaking a peek at vulgar men’s
magazlnes.
Now look again, through the eyes ofincreasingly concerned
educators and experts:
. Researchers in WasLrington, D.C., recentiy started aprogram to
prevent early sexual activiry. They planned to offer it to seventhgraders,
but after a pilot study decided to target fifth-graders-because
too many seventh-graders already were having sex. . Jo Mecham, a nurse at a Bettendorf, Iowa, middle school,
says she overhears “pretty explicit sexual talk” from boys and
girls in her “conservative” community. And despite a dress
code, girls come to classes looking like bare-bellied rock stars:
“They’I1 leave the house totaliy OK, and when they get to
school, they start disrobing.”
. Joey Zbylut-Birky, a middle-school teacher in Omaha, recently
asked students to think about “where they feel most comfortable”
as part of an assignment to write song titles about
themselves. A group of giggling boys piped up with comments
about receiving oral sex.
The list goes on. Middle schools that used to do without
dress codes now must send home exhaustive inventories of forbidden
garments, from tube tops to too-low hip-huggers.
Schools that used to handle crude language on a case-by-case
basis now must have “no-profanify” policies. And sexual-harassment
training is a normal part of middle-school curriculum.
The world “is rougher, it is sexier and it has reached down to
touch boys and girls at younger ages,” says Margaret Sagarese,
who, rvith Charlene C. Giannetti, has written several books on
parenting, including the new The Patience of a Saint: How
Faith Can SustainYotL DLtring the ToughTimes of Parenltng.
Baby-boomer parents who thoughL that nothing would ever
shock them are shocked by the way their young teens ta1k, dress
and perhaps even behave, Sagarese says.
“Things have changed,” says Jude Swift, 52, a mother of five
whose youngest is an eighrh-grade boy. “i think a greai deal of
it j.s due to the media and rvhat kids see on TV, in magazine ads, ;, in lideos…. -tt’s all abour beino sexv.”
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The world ‘is rougher, it is sexier’and it’s
harder for teens to avoid it
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Sr.vift, of Camillus, N.Y., says she picked up a Teen People
magazine the other day and “I was amazed. It was page after
page of young teens dressed in very provocative ways and in
very provocative poses.”
Young girls “do not see anything wrong in looking that
way,” says Zbylut-Birky, the Omaha teacher. And, she says.
“they don’t see the difference between how they should look for
a party and how they should look in an educatio.ol ccrrino ”
Boys Want to Look Sexy, Too
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