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Thursday, October 29, 2009
The Global War in Your Pants
A bit more commentary for anyone else who is still confused about how we feel about abstinence only education.
5 comments:
I attended SLU for a year before transferring and I just found out about this site through Facebook. I just wanted to say how amazing I think it is that you are doing this. I am sure you are all too aware of who frustrating that school is in regards to issues such as these. Congrats to you for sticking around (I didn't have it in me).
Keep up the good work! I look forward to following your progress. I am happy to support you, even if it's just from afar.
What is the goal of sex education these days? Teaching the birds and the bees? Preventing pregnancy? Preventing teen sexual activity?
Rachel,
That's a topic that's obviously under some pretty contentious debate these days, particularly so because under George W. Bush's presidency sex education was shifted heavily towards abstinence-only programs. Unfortunately, in regions where abstinence-only is the dominant form of education, teen pregnancy rates and STD infection rates rise. Here's an MSNBC article that explains the latest/most comprehensive study on this, but five seconds of googling will bring up a lot more supporting info:
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/8470845/
The medical and public health communities are overwhelmingly in favor of comprehensive sex education because it's proven to be much more effective in preventing teen pregnancies and transmission of disease.
President Obama is working to implement and fund programs that follow this current research and medical advice, although 25% of the budget for sex education is available for innovative projects; if an abstinence-based curriculum can prove itself to be effective, it will be eligible for funding along with more comprehensive sex ed programs.
So, prevention of pregnancy and STDs are the main goals of current sex ed, along with providing young people with a full range of info that can help them make well-informed choices.
Sound good?
Thanks for the great comments and support! We look forward to more good discussions like these.
Amanda,
I asked earlier what the goal is of sex education, and I didn't get a clear answer. Our inability to answer this basic question in the same way is inevitably going to cause other fundamental disagreements as to HOW sex ed should take place. This is the issue. It's not only a question of ends, but also a question of means. Our differing visions of ends will impact how we present sex ed (the means).
The reason there is such a debate about sex ed is that sex is a physical, psychological, emotional, AND spiritual experience. If you separate these meanings and experiences from one another in how you present sex education, you're going to screw up, one way or another. Distorting the meaning of sex is the reason we have so many, well, ISSUES with sex, STDs, 'unplanned pregnancies,' serial monogamy, divorce, promiscuity...I could go on. Our understandings of "comprehensive sex ed" are completely different. Sex ed that gives students the birds and the bees, as well as detailed information about birth control and STD prevention is not "comprehensive," it is impoverished and incomplete.
Fundamentally, it is a parent's responsibility to be the primary educator of their children (this is an aspect of Catholic social teaching, FYI). Parents are the ones who are to decide what sex ed info they want to present to their children, when, and in what context. A health teacher in a public school is ill-equipped to present sex education in the holistic way in which it should be presented. Heck, I wouldn't trust most physicians to present this information. Even though most parents these days are apparently bad ones who shirk this primary responsibility ("Talk to my kids about SEX? No way!"), it by no means allows the federal government to step in and provide sex education as it sees fit. If parents think that what is best for their kids to learn is to make "responsible decisions" with all the birth control information they could possibly need at their disposal, then that is their prerogative. They should actually DO this, not go out and push school boards and health teachers to present the information they're too freaked out to present themselves to their own children.
In the mean time, I would rather the federal government abstain from attempting a moral, psychological, and spiritual education of today's youth (however relativist that moral education might be). Biology classes require a discussion of the male and female reproductive systems. Health classes require supporting the overall health of the students involved. The safest, healthiest decision for a teenager to make, on all counts, is to abstain from sex. This is clear; this is what should be taught. If anything is said about sex in anything other than a biology context, this should be the default. If PARENTS want to add anything to this, or if they want to add any caveats to this, they can tell their own children.
What is the safest way for a teen to avoid pregnancy, disease, and heartbreak? Avoiding sex. Heck, this is the safest way for any unmarried human being to avoid these things. Anyone who teaches anything to the contrary is lying.
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