(January 25, 2005) — What bothered me the most about the ninth grade health and guidance textbook was the way it dictated the way a person should approach the world. I, for one, knew the world isn’t a happy fantasyland, and I knew what to expect and that was that cigarettes come in 20’s and you can get a dime bag of some chronic for $10. That’s the street, that’s society. And a textbook only told me that one had more tar than the other. Ever since the height of the 1960’s counter-culture movement, it’s been the “parents, talk to your son/ daughter” kind of deal, and it became apparent that sex and drugs was “Satan.” The 1960’s, being an apparent failure for parents, yet quite an uplifting, enlightening social/cultural revolution on the opposite end of the spectrum, forced parents to resort to something more suiting of this fascist system we were already starting to live in. Shelter one, and shelter all. Whether the moral aspect of mind-expanding substances and casual sex was right or wrong, this was what it was coming to: indiscriminate censorship. To censor the whole world to your child became the way to do it, whether you covered their eyes during a rated-R film or you simply clicked off the television when mention of any illicit activity took place. However, to simply shut out one’s curiosity, especially that of a child, holds serious consequences, more so today, due to the invention of the Internet. The rise of sex, drugs and rock and roll has become bleakly apparent in today’s culture, and what can one do to prevent their loved ones from slipping into this gutter of modern society? Parents can shelter and watch their pristine creation ultimately corrupt themselves in transition of teenager to young adulthood, or parents can compensate for textbooks and media trash and inform their progeny of the ugly road ahead. It is unnatural to inhibit one from the process of discovering his/her own environment and society, and the best a guardian can do is help distinguish between right and wrong. To tell a human not to have sex or not to smoke a cigarette- or even to look at porn- challenges the very nature of our being. So don’t hesitate to question your surroundings or your very existence. Discriminate between right and wrong, and know that some things are neither. Just keep in mind it’s not all happy faces and a Scrabble game with Mom and Pop.