Classmate News |
News from or about... |
Mike Hearons Ted Brekke Dona Malan |
Dona Malan Another trip for Dona took her through the Panama Canal and to Cartagena, Colombia; Puntarenas, Costa Rica; and to the Mexican cities of Huatulco, Acapulco, Puerto Vallarta, and Cabo San Lucas. |
The first night of the cruise she sat next to Wes Catlin's family for supper and discovered that his father, Leon Catlin, was the assistant principal of Wilson High School when we were there! |
The link below will take you to her site where you can click on "Panama Canal" and then on the locations of each of her stops to see her collection of photographs. Don't miss the amazing food displays and carvings of ice, fruit and vegetables at the "Days at Sea" photos. 11/03/09 |
Dona looking over the Acapulco harbor |
I think junior-high-school kids should have a survey course on sex as soon as they are enrolled. It shouldn't wait till high school when the hormones are really surging and learning suffers--book-learning, at least. When I entered 7th grade in 1949, there were only feeble attempts to explain sex to kids. At Lakewood Jr. High, that task fell to the physical education department. I remember poor Mr. Lehman, a Phys. Ed. instructor by education and training, saddled with packaging the birds and the bees for 13- to 15-year-old boys. I jumped at the chance to show how smart I was one day when Mr. Lehman gave an informal quiz to a throng of boys in the gymnasium. "What is the scrotum?" he asked the group. I fairly screamed, "THE LONG PART!" Okay, I was wrong but it got a huge laugh. I'm sure it impacted on my psychosexual development, but I have no idea how or to what degree. I think a key element of a good course on sex for adolescents would be the emphasis on how different the timelines are for sexual development among kids. Armed with that knowledge, I would not have been so confused in 1949 when I started junior high and met a 7th-grader named Richard Harrigan who had a moustache, a spectacular build from working out, and a taste for the ladies. (I didn't even have to shave till mid-1956!) Maybe if I had benefited from good classroom instruction on sex, I would not have been so awe-struck around Harrigan, and I could merely have said, "Great, Richard. It's your turn now, and mine later." I had a long wait. I was the next-to-shortest boy in the junior high graduating class in 1952. Victor Porlier was about an inch shorter. I think the course on sex should cover late-bloomers and help them understand what's going on! Victor and I could have used a lot of encouragement, watching everyone else grow up, get muscles, go out for track and football, date girls, and all that. Victor and I arrived at Wilson, still quasi-midgets. A guy needs encouragement, you know? Especially one who arrives at high school looking like a seventh-grader. Sheesh. I was only 5'-6" when I graduated. (Finally grew, over the summer of 1955, and attained 5'-10.5".) |
Mike Hearons Several months ago, we published a couple of humorous letters from Mike, where he was reminiscing about his high school years, especially with classmate Johnny Franks. In this follow-up letter, he takes a look at the sex education that we never got in the 1950s. |
Oh, sure, the course on sex would cover the "mechanics" of sex and provide all the correct anatomical terms. But its main value, I think, would be twofold: it would tell kids what to expect as they change physically into men and women, and it would (if correctly taught) give every kid the idea that sex can be a beautiful thing when experienced with the right person (ideally in a long-term relationship). A tall order. And I don't even know quite how the love aspect of sex would most effectively be packaged for today's crop of adolescents. We had many more shared values than children of the new millennium! Contemporary kids are more often the products of broken homes, and have typically been experimenting with sex to a degree that we would not have understood in the early 1950s! It would be a challenge to design a class on sex for today's adolescent, but the public schools (where most Americans still get educated) owe it to the kids to try. It seems ridiculous, when you step back and look at public education's aversion to sex. For Pete's sake, it is the single-most important phenomenon in a young teen-ager's life. Lots of attention is given to the three Rs, but virtually none to guidelines for growing up! All this talk about sex, and I haven't mentioned LUCK. I guess that should be covered at some point during the course. It was my good luck to stumble through school, get a 4-year college degree, stumble through the U.S. Army as a bone-head draftee (and not get myself killed), and to stumble upon the woman who has since defined me. How do you put luck like that into a textbook? Maybe that message has to be delivered in person. I guess a really good course on sex for adolescents would be incomplete without also teaching civility, respect for others, family values, reverence for life (and for God, if He is still permitted in a classroom)---all that old-fashioned stuff that is still part of our fiber. Otherwise, we would not be putting sex into real context. The kids should be made to understand that sex is not just an act, but a driving force that permeates their being for a lifetime. Now, how are we going to get all of that across to the pimply-faced wiseacre in the front row? Mike 11/23/09 |
Ted Brekke In response to Mike Hearons comments about sex education (above), Ted dug out some answers to a test he gave in 1985 to 6th grade students. He said that many of those 11-year-olds couldn't have cared less about the subject and he had one boy faint while viewing a video of an actual birth of a human baby. Ted didn't correct the spelling on their answers, which make some of them even funnier. The semi-colon separates responses of different students. Prostate: A gland located in the brain Navel: The nostril passage; Orange Bladder: The egg of a women; Where you carry your yarn; In your head Anus: Below the pines; It is a reactor sphinkter; The solid wast station; A boys penis or sex cell; The place where the vowel movement ejects; The head of the pense Acne: The egg of a women; a part of the males penus Breast: Two bumps on the chest; A female thing that makes milk (on girls) or is just there (on boys); The womens two sex things located on the chest; Known as boobs for girls and boys breasts don't grow, They are flatso boys breast don't get big Circumcision: Giving birth to a baby Constipation: When one of a boys eggs havent droped; Breast cancer; When you try to go to the bathroom and you can't take Pepmo brismo Menstruation: When you fittle with your vagina or penus; Having a wet dream Testicle: the mans egg...its below the pines egg Fetus: A babys private parts Foreskin: When a boy isn't circomsized he hs a foreskin on his anus; The sack around the baby Ejaculation: Your baby is ejecting out of the mother Genital Organs: A organ that is uniquely shaped Sperm: A wiggily thing that gets with the ladys egg & forms a baby; The males thing thats half the reason of making a baby Scrotum: rearend Embryo: When a girl has a check up; The skin on a boys penius Rectum: When you have heavy sex Feces: Humans have 23 of them; Around the head; The lining of the penis; A name for a disease around the vagina Maturity: When get good manners and start to like girls; When you can have sex Hymen: When the baby throws up; Haveing qualities of a man Masturbation: The period of the female being pregnant; Self appreciation of penis; When a male makes his penis erect for thrills Pubic region: Place on the body where hair grows besides your head Nocturnal emission: When a boy urinates in his sleep and it enables him to reproduce Womb: When someone gets injured Menopause: When a male can't mate 11/27/09 |
">
">
">
">
