Birds And Bees

Amy Sullivan previews the coming sex-ed wars:

...fights over what can and cannot be said in public schools about sex obscure a troubling reality: when it comes to taking sex education seriously, most kids are getting left behind. Only one state in the country requires schools to spend any specific amount of time teaching students about sex, one-third don't require any sex education at all, and the rest leave it up to schools--and sometimes individual teachers--to determine whether "sex ed" means an hour-long assembly kids attend once during their school career or an established curriculum that extends over years and helps them figure out how to develop healthy relationships and make decisions about sex.

Are public schools even the right place to be teaching kids about sex? Maybe not. But parents aren't really stepping up--surveys of parents and teens continue to show a significant gap between the percentage of parents who say they've talked to their kids about sex and the percentage of kids who report their parents have done so.