Posted on 02/09/2010 2:47:02 AM PST by FTJM
Dramatic new evidence that abstinence-only sex education can succeed in public schools ought to be good news for Texas, right? After all, state law requires an emphasis on abstinence, and most school districts stop there.
But education experts caution that the program tested is very different from the curriculum offered in many Texas schools. And while elements can be found in some North Texas classrooms, not even the researchers can say for certain which parts of their specially designed program made it work.
Advocates of abstinence-only classes praised the study, published last week in the latest issue of the Archives of Pediatrics & Adolescent Medicine. Even many experts who are generally critical of abstinence-only are impressed with the new research.
"That sends a message to people that you can do abstinence-only, but you need to be smart about it," said David Wiley, president of the American School Health Association. Wiley, a Texas State University professor who co-authored a study last year that was highly critical of most sex education programs in Texas, said there were valuable lessons in the new research.
(Excerpt) Read more at dallasnews.com ...
Abstinence should be promoted but I don’t understand why birth control education shouldn’t be included. There should always be a Plan B.
However, of course I’m opposed to birth control classes that glorify sex and deviancy.
For the Left, the idea that Abstenance only works is heartburn inducing.
I think Plan B was a poor choice of words in this debate.
I'd agree but only if abstinence was promoted as the only guaranteed way of preventing pregnancy and the contraction of STDs and that birth control is not so guaranteed.
My personal religious view is against birth control. But I don’t believe in making that the public policy. Even some of the most conservative parents have kids that fall for pre-marital sex.
True... but at some point in ever teenager's life the parents really have no control over the situation. I am not saying this is an excuse for them to have sex, but rather that there is only so much a parent can do. Teenagers need to understand the consequences of sex, and what means of preventing these consequences work and which ones do not work.
My own daughter is a little over a year old and I pray for guidance on this and other topics as I know they will hit me in the next 15 years or so. I want to tell her what I tell all the other teen girls in my family about sex, that at this age, boys see you as nothing more than a hole into which they want to stick their penises, and that they will say or do almost anything to get to do that. I'm going to do my best to instill into her the self-respect she'll need to help to avoid having sex as a minor... I just hope and pray that I can pull it off.
the biggest problem is the culture. That’s what the kids will follow when they decide to rebel.
I think your daughter is sooo lucky to have you as a parent. Being loving & informed is the best combination. Raising a strong young woman is one of the best deterrents (sp?)to teen sex. Best to you!
“Abstinence should be promoted but I don’t understand why birth control education shouldn’t be included. “
For the same reason we don’t teach kids how to smoke safely.
Rules:
1. The underlying message of Safe Sex is that kids can’t say “no” to sex.
2. So we tell them to use a condom.
3. But what if the guy refuses to wear a condom?
4. See rule 1.
Which part of abstinence education works??? Well let’s do the birds and bees 101. Johnny keeps it in his pants and Judy keeps her panties on.
So it has ever been. At the same time, girls are thinking 'romance, love and marriage'. In short, boys are feral animals at that age, while girls are idealistic and naive.
I guess its too late to go back to "shotgun weddings", ie. "you break it, you buy it".
Assuming no babies are involved, do these really work out well? I can't imagine a girl wanting to be married to some dirtbag she just met.
No less an authority on the old West than the redoubtable Louis L'Amour says over and over in his novels that for a man to harm a woman in any way had the most dire consequences. Her father, brothers, friends etc, would hunt him down and kill him.
Or, if it was something like a sixteen year old kid who was basically decent, he was forced to 'man up'. Marry the girl, get a job, provide for and protect her.
In the past, studies have shown that actual abstinence-only courses work, but the "education experts" argued that the studies didn't have appropriate controls.
So this study was all about controls. The team wrote their own training courses -- 4 of them, 1 abstinence only, one safe-sex only, one with both, and a control with just general health training.
They offered the 4 courses on saturdays, and had the kids in different schools, so they wouldn't interact (the biggest "anti-abstinence" study, from 2007, was flawed in that it had the control groups in the same schools as the abstinence groups, which means the positive peer pressure could work on the control group, as well as negative peer pressure, and the kids would talk to each other about what they were learning as well). The study found that abstinence-only had measurable effects 2 years after the course, and that ALL 4 groups had a similar rate of "safe sex" for those who had sex -- meaning the abstinence education did not make it more likely for kids to have unprotected sex. Another flaw in the 2007 anti-abstinence study was that it only looked at 5-year-out results, AND only looked at "yes-no" questions (did you have sex or not, how many different partners did you have) rather than frequency of sex. We expect kids will eventually have sex no matter what we tell them -- the key is to get them to wait, because the younger kids start having sex, the more likely they are to have unprotected sex, and the more often they will end up having sex. And the 2007 study didn't measure whether the abstinence kids had less sex than the others.
This study showed that rates of condom usage among those who had sex were identical for the abstinence-only group and the control group.
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.