If we weren't afraid to teach kids hard facts outside of math class, we'd probably be a lot further along than we are now. Kids can smell bullshit, and the perceptive ones know when they're being lied to by supposed authorities. The smart ones, like I was (not to toot my own horn...I was above-average, in this case), go and look up the facts ourselves. We look up shit like how evolution works, how condoms work and how well, et cetera.
However, this number would be a fuckton higher if we dispensed with the myths, dispensed with the lies, and just told our kids the fucking truth. My parents, for all their faults, were always honest with me. When I came asking how I was born, they told me the truth, in a way I, at the time, could understand. When they talked to me about sex...which was mostly my mother's doing, they realized that there was every chance that I'd be one of the majority of folks who wouldn't save themselves for marriage, and emphasized safe sex, particularly using a fucking rubber. Yes, they're religious folks, and when I asked where we came from, they gave me the Christian answer for it, but they in their own minds, were still being perfectly honest, they weren't knowingly deceiving me or trying to bullshit me. Hell, even now, my mother's taking me aside, at times, and explaining shit to me that I need to know so I can survive when I'm on my own, like how to handle potential bankruptcy, taxes, how to spot good deals from bad ones, how to avoid getting swindled.
Unlike a lotta folks, they actually care about seeing me grow as my own person, and not just as a copy of themselves. So long as I'm successful and happy, they're happy, and that's how it should be. They gave, and continue to give, me the tools I need to survive; no lies, no manipulation, no deception, no bullshit. That should be America's new slogan, not "In God We Trust" or "E pluribus unum," but simply "No bullshit."