The Clinton impeachment, "in a gray area of history, too long ago to be a current event, too recent to be judged in perspective," has now hit school textbooks. The textbooks vary in how they treat the scandal, but all of them, even the college-level ones, are equally reluctant to get into the, um, details of what Clinton lied about:
Middle school texts describe it as "a personal relationship between the president and a White House intern." In high school books, it is Clinton's "improper relationship with a young White House intern," or Clinton "denied having sexual relations" with an intern.
I remember being talked to by some nervous teachers during that period about our Student Voices letter-to-the-editor monthly competition, open to middle and high school students. We chose the topics for the contest, and on alternate months we picked generic topics or taken-from-the-headlines subjects. Clinton's woes were in the news so much that year that more than one of the contests was based on the Monica affair or its fallout. To tell you the truth, the kids dealt more maturely with the subect than most adults who wrote letters to the editor. I suspect they could handle some of the "sordid details" in textbooks, too.
Comments
We have sort of a schizophrenic way of dealing with our kids and sexuality. On the one hand, we'd like to keep them completely sheltered until they're 18. On the other hand, they're constantly barraged with sexual imagery from advertisements, among other things. Then there is the gratuitous violence that prevades our games and movies and music and TV shows and whatnot.
I agree with the sentitment that they're probably prepared to handle a lot more than we give them credit for. I think they'd be better able to deal with the media barrage if the adults in their lives talked to them in a realistic way about sexuality.
(Pretty easy for me to say now when my oldest is a 2 year old. We'll see how I deal with it as the kids approach adolescence.)