ABSTINENCE-ONLY DRIVER'S ED.
BY SUZANNE KLEID- - - -
Thanks for making it out on a rainy Saturday, kids. Slippery out there, huh? Let's get started. We're gonna have some fun today!
Car accidents are a leading cause of death for teenagers. The school board and your elected representatives want to make sure that you and your families are spared from such a tragedy, which is why the money for driver's ed was eliminated from the budget. Whereas last year I was teaching your older siblings how to shift and brake and three-point-turn during a six-week course, it has since been decreed that I actually need just one afternoon to tell you the only piece of safety information I'm permitted by law to share:
The ONLY 100 percent effective method for avoiding car accidents is to ABSTAIN from driving until marriage.
And it gets better from there. Read the whole thing.
Thanks to reader Samantha for passing this along.
0 TrackBacks
Listed below are links to blogs that reference this entry: Friday funny.
TrackBack URL for this entry: http://www.feministing.com/cgi-bin/movabletype/mt-tb.fcgi/6916
Weekly Feministing Newsletter
Feministing RSS Feed
Wow. Brilliant. I love when all the elements come together this well. The analogy is so perfect at pointing out the extended absurdities of this asinine & measurably harmful idea of abstinence only education. 10 out of 10.
It reminds me of the Onion story a while back about the Christian Scientist pharmacists who refuse to dispense any medication whatsoever.
Remember this handy little slogan: "No ring on your finger, no hand on the shifter."
I want that on a T-shirt. Love the part about accidents increasing "quintupled" since the program started. This was a great pick me up after lunch and now I have a new website to browse while I pretend to work:)
That made my day.
Bwahaha! That was great!
The scary thing is, abstinence-only drivers' ed almost makes MORE sense than abstinence-only sex ed...
Brilliant! God bless Reader Samantha!
Hey everybody,
I almost shot coffee out my nose after seeing this post: I'm a huge feministing fan and I am the author of "Abstinence-Only Driver's Ed." It was, actually, partly inspired by things I've read here, and partly inspired by comments left on this column about abstinence-only sex ed in the San Francisco Chronicle by Violet Blue. A commenter said, well, auto accidents kill kids, maybe we should stop teaching them to drive? And my wheels, so to speak, started turning.
FWIW, I actually don't drive. I've never had a license. I am a pure, waiting, automotive vestal virgin, unlike the dirty, dirty driving likes of you.
thank you all so much, this totally made my day.
-Suzanne
Ha, hilarious!
It makes me think of my crazy driving school teacher who tried to convince me that age leads to being conservative (somewhat true...maybe). We had an hour long argument (while I was driving) about abortion. I have a feeling she would have passed me even if I'd crashed into a building and failed to pay for lessons...she was far too busy trying to convert me to notice otherwise
Awesome article. My driver's ed experience was actually a lot like that, considering the amount of time we spent watching "don't drink and drive or you and your loved ones will be splattered all over the highway" videos compared to the time we spent actually driving. They stopped offering driver's ed at my high school the year before I was eligible to take it, so I paid for the privilege, too.
I'm not at all saying that it isn't important to impress upon kids the dangers of drunk driving, but they left out a whole lot of the "learning how to drive" part, which I think is also really important. Which of course is the point of any driver's ed or (comprehensive) sex ed class.
This is great. really funny. but at the same time really shows how silly abstinence ed is.
It reminds me of that one where they question a robbery victim the same way they would if he had been a rape victim instead.
(by the way I lost my link to that one, so if anyone has it please pass it on)
You're thinking of "The Rape of Mr. Smith." And here you go!
http://www.geocities.com/Wellesley/3059/smith.html
thanks