Posted on 2/3/2010, 11:04:22 AM by rightwingintelligentsia
(Feb. 2) -- What if abstinence-only programs actually work?
That's the question facing educators this week after a groundbreaking study found that students who take classes emphasizing abstinence are less likely to have sex than those who take classes teaching safe sex.
Although the effectiveness and virtues of sex-ed versus abstinence-only curricula have long been the subject of fierce debate in American schools, the federal study, published in the Archives of Pediatric & Adolescent Medicine, is the first of its kind to suggest that programs encouraging students to abstain from having sex altogether are successful.
Just under half of the students in the study who received sex-education classes that included information about contraceptives went on to have sex in the next two years. But only one out of three students in the study who received abstinence-only education did.
Researchers say the long-term study, which followed 662 African-American public middle school students between 2001 and 2004, is significant. John Jemmott, a professor at the University of Pennsylvania who headed the study, told The Washington Post, "I think we've written off abstinence-only education without looking closely at the nature of the evidence. Our study shows this could be one approach that could be used."
(Excerpt) Read more at aolnews.com ...
lemme see if I get this one, it’s a toughie:
if you have sex you might get pregnant.
if you don’t have sex you can’t get pregnant.
therefore, if you don’t want to get pregnant, don’t have sex.
it takes an advanced degree to figure this out???
Do what? That’s impossible!
I just can’t for the life of me see how telling kids to wait until they’re married to have sex would result in fewer kids having sex before marriage.
Really enjoyed your tag line! Thanks, mind if I use that in an email to friends?
Go right ahead! I stole it from my wife, who got it in turn from her great-grandfather, who was an undertaker.
Why would they limit the study to black children?
Abstinence is only 99.99999% effective in the prevention of pregnancy.
/think VIRGIN Mary
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