The following excerpts are from an article in Time magazine about sex education in the United States (
How to End The War Over Sex Ed)
"The program that helped Jewels provided her with information about birth control and encouraged her to try abstinence."
"It is a model of what can happen when a community decides that it's crazy to spend more time teaching kids about decimals and fractions than about dating and sex."
"Conservatives see lower rates of sexual activity as a direct result of abstinence education. Meanwhile, liberals attribute greater use of birth control to better education about and access to contraceptives. (In fact, researchers think fear of STIs--especially HIV--and a natural correction from high rates of sexual activity during the sexual revolution explain much of the change.)"
"... {South Carolina passed the Comprehensive Health Education Act} doesn't limit teachers to abstinence-only lessons; rather, it allows each school district to make its own decisions about what sex education should involve. But with federal funding limited to abstinence-only programs, local districts have a powerful incentive to restrict their sex-education curriculum."
The article discusses a local teen-pregnancy-prevention organization called
Impact. Carol Burdette, the executive director of United Way for the South Carolina community featured in the article contacted
Impact to use their curriculum in the (presumably public) schools. With the district's approval, the local United Way raised $40,000 to hire a recent Clemson University graduate, Kristen Jordan, to be the district's dedicated sex-education teacher.
"... kids ... see Jordan as a counselor they can turn to with questions and in crises. (The fact that she's not an official school employee helps inspire that trust and also means she can help students schedule medical appointments.)
(...)
"The program gives students escalating levels of information about STIs, pregnancy and contraception. But it also encourages them to delay sexual activity, works on building self-esteem and uses role-playing to teach them how to resist pressure from peers and partners."
(...)
"... posters covering the room's walls with slogans like NOT ME, NOT NOW and SELF-RESPECT: THE ULTIMATE CONTRACEPTIVE."
(...)
"The comprehensive sex-education model used in District 3 is sometimes referred to as "abstinence first" or "abstinence plus" because it combines factual information about birth control and STIs with a strong message that kids should wait to have sex. From what Jordan and her colleagues have seen, it best fits the reality of most teenagers' lives. Most students won't wait until they get married to have sex, so they need to be told more than "Just say no." "
(...)
"Jordan's approach seems to be working. ... The only thing stopping them is money."
"However, nearly half the comprehensive programs that have been studied reduced sexual risk in three areas: delaying the age at which teens first have sex, reducing the number of sexual partners they have and increasing their use of condoms."
"Douglas Kirby, a neutral analyst who has studied sex-education programs for more than three decades, says most evaluations of abstinence-only programs have found "no impact on sexual behavior.
"{Kirby also says}... effective programs these days "have a very clear message that not having sex is the safest choice. They put emphasis on skill-building and role-playing, they teach how to use condoms, and they encourage young people not to have sex."
"Yet even if every community in America woke up tomorrow and decided to put an end to the sex-education wars--laying aside the chastity belts and condom bananas and embracing comprehensive, abstinence-first education--it's not clear that much would change. That's because for all the battles over funding and policies, no one really knows how sex education is taught inside most classrooms."
What I got out of itThe article seems to lean pro-abstinence. It mentions science-based education, but it always swerves back to abstinence as the preferred option. For example, there is a passage that puts down an education of "decimals and fractions" in favor of one that studies "dating and sex" implying that students can't have both empirical-based knowledge along with ethics. There is also no mention of whether "dating and sex" goes beyond the heterosexual. (Certainly the article sticks close to the subject of teen pregnancy, but the title is "How to End The War Over Sex Ed." By avoiding teh ghey, is Time saying that one way to end this war would be to pretend that there is no teh ghey?)
Also, when comparing "conservative" and "liberal" points of view, the writer safely claims that they are both just as wrong as the other, because of this imaginary "third way" (I've been hearing alot about this lately) based on what "researchers" have found. Another problem with this section is that it misrepresents the "liberal" position on sexual education: first as being
opposed to science-based information and secondly as being overly reliant on science-based "birth control" while ignoring "alternative contraceptives" (which are anything but science-based).
It seems the liberals have found a way to be simultaneously opposed to science, while clinging to it. (Perhaps this may have to do with teh bi?)
There is an over-emphasis on marriage as the only permissible institution in which people are allowed to engage in sexual activity. Anyone who is having sex outside marriage isn't being very abstinent and (presumably) anyone who can't get married (teh ghey) aren't allowed to have sex. (Or is Time saying what gheys do isn't technically sex?)
Now, we move onto the money problem of sex-ed.
The article weasles past why federal funding for sex-ed is limited to abstinence-only products and quickly inserts a short advertisement for this local "teen-pregnancy-prevention organization" in without giving much information about them, except to say they aren't run by the school district (teh socialist?), they seem to be successful, and that it still includes abstinence-only products (praise Baby Jesus).
After nearly two and a half pages of words, the article does finally mention the biggest taboo of sex-ed, not teh ghey, but teh condom, which is then immediately dismissed as some kind of Ashton Kutcher prank.
Next up is some science guy, who will probably insist he was either misquoted or his comments were taken out of context (or both), since even he has wonderful things to say about this abstinence-only solution.
Lastly, the article ends on the GOP-controlled media's favorite tactic:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Appeal_to_fear#Fear.2C_uncertainty_and_doubt">doubt. With phrases such as "yet even if" and "no one knows" Time can conclude this fine piece ... of journalism feeling safe that their publication will embrace the sanctity of the abstinence-only family of products and neve be tainted by the scourge that is science-based information!
Heckuva job, Time!
Oh, and just for fun, here are some of the things Time magazine thought you might be interested in if you read their article:
In addition they linked to snippets on how to pay for college, a slideshow of college mascots, a slideshow about teens and voting and recruiting kids for basketball.
(Sorry this is so long)
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