Edutopia - April/May 2008 - (Page 52)

Serious A hip and homespun podcast about sex education is a hit with teens. By Fran Smith n Episode 12 of a new podcast called The Midwest Teen Sex Show, a teenage girl walks into a kitchen to ⇒nd her mother washing dishes at the sink. GIRL: Hey, Mom . . . what’s sex? MOM (horror stricken, drops her dish towel, plugs each ear with a ⇒nger, and unleashes an I-don’t-want-to-hear-this shriek): La-la-la-la-la-la-laaaa! In the next scene, daughter and boyfriend are kissing. SHE: So, um—do you want to have sex? HE (leaning back): Yeah. SHE: OK. (She plugs her ears.) La-la-la-la-la-la-laaaa! The bit is funny, but the point is serious: Sex should be discussed openly, fully, and without embarrassment. That message—plus the bite and wit of its delivery, not to mention the provocative coupling of teen and sex in the title—has made this homespun podcast an instant hit on the Web. With its blend of honesty, humor, and technology, Midwest offers an accessible, upbeat alternative to what schools generally teach about sex —if they teach anything at all. The young creators of Midwest are not professional educators, but they understand how to reach the ⇒rst generation of teens to grow up with new media. The show addresses what kids want to know, in a way they like to learn, adding a new twist to an old battle over sex education in America. “It’s groundbreaking, it’s hip, it’s clever,’’ says Judith Steinhart, a certi⇒ed sexuality educator in New York City. “There are things about sex you can absolutely learn from watching the show—things you won’t learn in your health ed class, if you’re lucky enough to have one.” The three- to four-minute video riffs made their debut last June. Since then, the show has covered such topics as homosexuality, abstinence (pros and cons), birth control, the older boyfriend, and in Episode 12, parents. (“Unless you were found in a Dumpster, you have parents to deal with. If they haven’t had the sex talk with you, you should have it with them.”) On iTunes, where Midwest is listed as a health program, the show often appears among the ⇒ve most frequently downloaded podcasts in the category. Earlier this year, the open source player Miro ranked Midwest as its most popular series ever, ahead of programs from such heavyweights as the Discovery Channel Fun I and Comedy Central. Each episode gets about 125,000 viewers, and one survey showed 37 percent are ages 13–20. “What you guys say out loud, I say in my head,’’ nineteenyear-old Matthew Chase, of Rochester, wrote in an email to the show’s creators. “You’re treating sex exactly the way it should be treated,’’ a fan wrote on the Midwest Web site. “As something—gasp—normal.’’ “You’re interesting, clearly labeled, informative,’’ another enthusiast wrote. “I’ve worked in religious schools where the one-size-⇒ts-all attitude has alienated many teens and made them worried about sexuality. So I really enjoy your program. Keep it up.” The team behind Midwest did not expect to attract a passionate following. “We were shocked that people actually started watching,’’ says Guy Clark, the show’s twenty-nine-year-old, Chicago-based director. But it should come as no surprise that in today’s education and cultural environment, teens are ⇓ocking to a show that delivers straight talk about the pleasures and the risks of sex—direct to their iPods. “It’s very much the type of honest and nonjudgmental information that young people are craving,’’ says Esperanza Macias, executive director of Health Initiatives for Youth, a San Francisco nonpro⇒t organization that runs workshops on sexuality and risk reduction. School-based sex education tends to be split into two camps: abstinence only, or the so-called comprehensive approach, which discourages early sexual activity but encourages the use of condoms and other precautions if premarital sex occurs— and it does, for 95 percent of Americans, according to a study published in 2007 in Public Health Reports. Federal and state governments have spent more than $1 billion on abstinence programs since 1996, and President George W. Bush is seeking increased funding for next year— even though a recent $8 million evaluation mandated by Congress found such instruction doesn’t stop or even delay sex. Meanwhile, fourteen states have rejected the abstinence money and mandate, choosing curricula that acknowledge teens may indeed have sex. But even in this relatively tolerant atmosphere, the abstinence crusade has left a chill. “Teachers at this point are somewhat afraid,’’ says Deb Levine, executive director of Internet Sexuality Information Services, in 52 EDUTOPIA APRIL/MAY 2008 GETTY IMAGES

Table of Contents Feed for the Digital Edition of Edutopia - April 2008

Edutopia - April 2008 Contents Up Front Feedback Dispatches Sage Advice Ask Ellen Head of the Class Cool Schools Design Reinventing the Big test The Daring Dozen Heart & Soul Pop Quiz: Jack Prelutsky

Edutopia - April 2008

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