Luann by Greg Evans and Karen Evans for October 15, 2011

Oh, trust me, Luann — you don’t know the half of it (but then again, at 16, you’re SUPPOSED to think you already know everything!)

Nancy’s “processing” look: priceless!

Usually by 13 they know quite enough to get into trouble. By 16, they better know more (I’m speaking as the parent of a 16-year-old).

I had to go through a psychology class recently but the youth’s brains doesn’t fully develop, or was it stabilize, until a suprisingly late age. Freshmen year of college most people aren’t finished changing inside yet.

STD’s doesn’t fit into the family unit. That is strictly part of S*x Ed. Which is one semester of health; they seperate the boys and girls; and the key intent of s*x ed is to teach the kids how NOT to make babies or spead disease.

Perhaps we didn’t see Tiff in the class because her parents wouldn’t sign the slip, or she didn’t show it to them?

Makes me long for the good ole days when all you needed to do to learn to be an adult was spend some quality time with them. Ah-h-h-h-h!

Yeah, at 16 I knew WAY too much….. What can I say? I was eager to learn! …The downside is some things are better learned at an older age, because the young and “eager” 13 year old brain can’t quite sort itself out yet.

Oh well, live and learn I guess ;)

I’m just glad this storyline is almost over. It was getting kinda old.

What HAVE we learned this week?

Well, according to SOME folks on THIS forum:

Quill? All that STUFF he said? He was just kiddin’.

Crystal? All THAT stuff SHE said? SHE was just Kiddin’.

Okay, I GOT it.

BOY, old Man Fogarty will be glad to KNOW that his students took his class assignment so ‘Seriously’….,

The teenage brain complete its changes at approximatly 25 yrs old. That is when Puberty is over.

I was thinking this week’s storyline was lame until I was talking to a 19YO girl. She was telling me about her second pregancy, with her first pregnancy ending in a miscarriage, as she puffed on a cigarette.

This whole exercise showed the innocence of all the players involved. Tiffany wasn’t in there because we don’t have any jocks in the strip.

I think they all learned a lot more abut each other than they expected, and it really turned out to be not what they wanted. Especially Luann.

I must have grown up in an extremely unusual situation, because at 13, I was already lecturing other kids what they shouldn’t be doing. Lost me a lotta friends. I sat around at grown ups gatherings and they obviously didn’t realize I was listening, so I soaked it in. Didn’t make HALF the mistakes a normal teen makes. But after school was out, people came to me and asked how did I know. Little pitchers got big ears, that’s how. And my parents talked openly about all sexual matters, so I didn’t need sex ed, and therefore opted out. At 46, I don’t have as many “I wish I hadn’t….” as everyone I grew up with. Then again, I’ve never claimed to be normal. :D

It’s a comic strip…a great work of art, an on-going American novel. Can you imagine doing one of these…or maybe as many as you can! to get ahead…?I learned quite a bit about current high-school topics…I learned what a lot of intelligent people’s opinion of such is…I got a chance to look at a few of my own assumptions…it’s all helping me find my way thru memories of high school long ago.Thanks to the artists, and thanks to the commenters. Shared experience, anyone?

Some even more cynical than me! I thought it was impossible.

I am still wondering about The audition Tiffany went to. Who did get the part? Did I miss something?

I hope so I am courious. Well anyways we did go through sex ed in health class but nothing like this. When did they come up with this idea with the eggs?

I agree with Luann, they learned nothing apart from how lame some educational programs can be.

If Tiffany did pair up with someone, they may as well be invisible.

Not al school systems are the same. If they did include sex ed in health classes in 5th grade, it would be mostly academic. For these 16 year olds, they are dealing with the emotional aspects and had better give some thought to the realistic consequences of their decisions.

In the archives somewhere, there is a strip with Luann and her chums (Bernice and Delta) coming out of a sex ed class, Luann says something along these lines:. “They give us lots of theory, but we don’t get the needed practice.”.Do I misremember this ? No search function any more, can anyone find this?

Y’know, it’s funny. Generations before, up until the 1960s, had no sex education, had no “role playing” as we see here, no classes about sex, pregnancy, STDs, domestic violence, et cetera ad nauseum. But they still had children, raised families, built households, and made it work. Makes you wonder, doesn’t it?

As a lifelong Meat Loaf fan, I have to point out that the “facts of life” for ‘Paradise’ – marriage or lifetime commitment in return for getting to “go all the way” – still isn’t one that kids gotta know right now (sorry, couldn’t help it), since in the song it’s a clear commitment on both sides, and that isn’t the case now. Today there’s a real pressure to have a boyfriend, and too many girls think the only way to either get or hang onto a boyfriend is to have sex with them. That can pass for reasoning when someone’s 13 or so, but it’s still a rude awakening when they find out that the commitment they made isn’t reciprocated, or even assumed. Any sort of decision or pledge you make at this age about sex, and that includes purity rings or purity pacts until marriage, is still conditional on that fact that you still really know bleep about real life.

Agreed the girls pay most of all, they always have. But my point is that while the song’s perfect for demonstrating that guys will swear to anything to get laid (she makes him swear he needs her and will love her forever before she gives up the goods, and he makes the vow , a perfect quid pro quo)…

…it’s also not the best example because he also keeps that vow. Remember, at the end both of them are singing, with some venom, that they’re waiting til the the end of time so they can end their time with each other – and they mean it as they’ll finally get released from a life sentence. She either somehow held him to it or he kept the commitment on his own, but they’re both unhappy with each other and in prison – so it wasn’t a good tradeoff for that night.

What it IS a perfect example of is that the people you want when you’re a teenager are NOT the people you’re going to want to end up with, and if you make a lifetime decision as a teenager like getting married or pregnant, later on you’ll probably wish you hadn’t done that so young.

Remember, it was long ago and it was far away, and it was so much better than it is today. Sort of says it all about making a lifetime commitment for a transient thrill.

I always loved the opening of “Gattaca” – the opening shot is a beach and the voiceover says, “I was conceived in the Riviera.”

And then the camera pans back and you see a young couple lying in the back seat of a Buick.

It’s no surprise that parents haven’t a clue about what their children have learned. We should be amazed at how much they know and how little we had to do with it.

You never said a truer word, but it’s amazing how many parents still think that all sex ed will do is put nasty thoughts in their virginal darlings’ little minds. Innocence and ignorance are two different things, and keeping your kids ignorant and uneducated won’t protect them or keep them pure. Some parents learn the difference the hard way.

This is why I don’t waste my time at a regular school….

To be specific about the teenage brain, it’s the prefrontal cortex – which we use for judgment and impulse control – that doesn’t finish developing until the early to mid 20s.

As for what they do or don’t already know, teens in any class tend to tune in more often when something familiar is being discussed, and tune out a lot of the rest. Thus, when recalling what they learned, many of them think they know a lot more about the lesson than they actually do (a huge pitfall when quizzes and tests come along). And with so many titillating topics in health class alongside the “boring” parts about actually taking care of oneself, this effect is magnified further.

legaleagle48- believe me, she probably does

I learned everything in family life when I was 10-13. My parents didn’t tell me shit. :-/

Did she say STDs???