This is your penis; this is a condom on your penis

A North Carolina teacher makes sure sex education is comprehensive and anatomically correct.

Published December 15, 2005 7:54PM (EST)

Broadsheet would like to pause for a moment to give a shout-out to Mark Kadlecik, a 10th-grade teacher in the Chapel Hill-Carrboro school system. According to an article in today's News & Observer, though more than 100 of the 117 school systems in North Carolina are under state mandate to stick to abstinence-only sex education, Kadlecik and his supervisors have gone through extensive public hearings and obtained a special waiver in order to offer their students comprehensive sex education. Now, Kadlecik says, when kids ask him what brands of condoms are best, he won't turn them away or tell them to ask their parents, but will advise them to "go with a major brand and avoid ... truck stops." Next semester, he will instruct students how to properly put on a condom -- using an accurate model of a penis! Does he worry that his students won't be able to handle it? Of course not -- Mr. K is cool! "I tell them, 'We're going to talk about a mature topic,'" Kadlecik tells the News & Observer. "They buy into it."

Now that's what we call a valuable education.


By Sarah Karnasiewicz

Sarah Karnasiewicz is a freelance writer and photographer based in Brooklyn, N.Y. Until recently, she was senior editor at Saveur magazine; prior to that she was deputy Life editor at Salon. She has contributed to the New York Times, the New York Observer and Rolling Stone, among other publications. For more of her work, visit thefastertimes.com/streetfood and Signs and Wonders.

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