Talk:Disciplinary Action/Characters/Fourth Grade
You know? I've been thinking. At some point we need a page where we sit in on the sex-ed class. It would be quite helpful to hear what is actually taught to these kids. Probably doesn't go into a lot of depth if it's taught at fourth grade, and speaks to the poor quality of the sex-ed program in the town if there's not a repeat version at 6th grade and then again in 9th with increasingly thorough jobs at each level. Most schools teach it at 6th or 7th, then again at 9th in more detail. It is in the past 5 years or so a lot of school programs started adding a 4th grade level for the sex-ed course as well that is less detailed but breaks the ice, and there is some discussion of adding a 2nd-grade version intended to increase reporting of child molestation. At any rate I am guessing it's a little more detailed than what's really taught to 4th graders, but less detailed than what's really taught to 6th graders, while at the same time having a bit of fire and brimstone mixed in. Jemini (talk) 23:31, 1 October 2017 (CEST)
You're completely right, we need to decide how to deal with this class before going too much forward, since it'll become more relevant as the story progresses, and I honestly had not put too much thought in it previously.
How about something like this? They decided to implement the class in fourth grade about 5 years ago, after an external inspector told the school it was now mandatory for all schools in the district and gave them a full sex-ed plan for introducing children to sex-ed in several courses from fourth grade till ninth grade. The school though, decided only to implement the fourth grade course, since it felt talking about sex with older children could lead them to try it. This would mean that at this point in time, only children from fifth grade till ninth grade (9 to 14 year-olds) have had that limited sex-ed. Older children would not even have that, as they passed fourth grade before it was implemented. (I would have to check on the bios of older characters to see if any mention of sex-ed is present, and rephrase it).
As for the actual contents of the class, indeed it would have a lot of fire and brimstone mixed in, but with some real information here and there. I think they would actually use some physiology diagrams to show the differences between the internal structure of boys and girls, specially showing how a baby grows in the woman, since that would not be considered "obscene". The "official" program would likely forgo any mention of coitus or it's details, but children being as curious as they are, they would ask "how does the baby get's in there?" and the teacher might be willing to go into a brief off-course explanation (it's mentioned that the teacher had problems teaching the class, so it's possible the students overwhelm her).
A lot of the class could be focused on teaching them that sex is when a married couple "sleeps together" to have children. That they might start to feel attraction toward their classmates, but they have to wait until they are dating and them married to act on those impulses from the devil. That those that give in to those impulses lose their purity. And that girls that end up pregnant outside marriage are destined to work at the whorehouse.
I imagine it's not a single class, but likely a few classes divided throughout the year, each one dealing with a bit of information and disinformation. I also imagine they would separate boys and girls for the class.
Finally, as you have doubtlessly seen on the first quarter index page, I expect the disciplinary program to put a wrench into the usual sex-ed class this year, where real students will be used as props to show the young ones exactly what they should be learning.
Those are my initial thoughts, please add whatever other ideas you have, and if you want you can create a section with the teacher to put a more detailed version of the sex-ed class, it's the only place I can think of that would fit for now. --Tod Naturlich (talk) 06:13, 2 October 2017 (CEST)
Actually, I just thought of the perfect way to get the information to the reader and establish what we've got. He can just ask the 4th grade teacher herself on the first week. As for what's in the class, I agree with the basic idea here. Having Suzy Marlow know about how babies are made is what got his curiosity up in the first place, so having her know about coitus is going to be important for the implementation of this, so how about we go with what you said that coitus is not on the official lesson but she used to explain it on an off-course explanation.
However, it also mentions her getting death threats from the parents, so that might have been a key source of a lot of her death threats, so maybe she explained it for the first time, and then maybe skipped a few years on saying that part. Obviously, it got out in last year's class, so Suzy knows about it. I also have mention of it in Tihana's bio, but in her case it could easily be removed. So, the 9th graders know about it, probably both genders, and the 5th grade girls know about it, maybe the 6th grade girls too. She might have decided just not to teach it anymore at all to either gender after the death threats of the first round, but decided to experiment 2 years ago with only telling it to the girls to a somewhat less fevered response from parents, and then got more bold in it in 5th grade telling them that it gets there when a boy touches her privates with his, and that they should not let a boy touch her there with his penis or else she will get pregnant getting really fire-and-brimstone about it and making sure to scare them. She would have told them he uses his penis to put his seed inside her, but probably not what the "seed" looks like.
As for diagrams, probably only going to use the female cross-section view with the baby and without the baby so she can explain where the uterus is in the body and then show the image of the baby growing in it. The town probably decided not to allow the male cross-section since that one makes it easier to make out the external genitalia in the cross-section. Jemini (talk) 08:34, 2 October 2017 (CEST)
Ok, the great Forth -> Fourth migration is done. All praise Git archives, otherwise I don't think I would have been able to find every single instance of this error in the project. --Tod Naturlich (talk) 01:48, 3 October 2017 (CEST)