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The CDC recently reported a rise in the teen birth rate. Many wonder why when we are learning about filed contraceptive measures at school are those same schools handing out condoms. Doing so is likened to a story my grandfather always told me, “It’s like giving a kid candy and telling them it’s not good for them and they shouldn’t eat it, but here it is just in case you get a craving for some. Wouldn’t we wonder why so many kids are eating candy?” It’s like giving teenagers the keys to your sports car and a six pack and telling them to be good and not get into trouble or wreck the car. Let’s stop promoting unclear messages and let our children know that the only safe way and the best way is abstinence. It encourages healthy choices and healthy life styles. ["J-Unit" -- another fearful anonymous blogger, perhaps just one of several pseudonyms used by Leslee to create a false impression of multivocality, "CDC reports rise in birth rate," Abstinence Clearinghouse Blog, 2007.12.17]
No sources, no quantification of the dominance of nefarious condom-hander-outers in our schools, just that classic rhetorical strategy, argumentum ad grandfatheriam (throw quote marks around your own words and ascribe them to your grampy).
Here's the Madville Times's funnies for the day:
And here's this morning's AltCause argument for the policy debaters tuning in: Bush's stubborn adherence to the abstinence-only sex-ed policy, despite all evidence to the contrary, is a more likely cause for the reversal of the teen-birth trend. The argument that the increase in teen births links to teachers talking about contraceptives is bogus.
1. Not teachers' fault: The increase in teen births in 2006 reported by the CDC is the first increase since 1991. Let me put my old Republican hat back on for a moment: even when that no good wife-cheatin', intern-lovin', sex-crazed Bill Clinton was in office, kids were managing to to have fewer kids each year. Teachers couldn't talk about current events without bumping into a conversation about sex. There is likely little difference in the attitudes of sex-ed teachers toward contraceptives now from their attitudes in the 1990s. Put another way (and turning that musty old Republican hat a bit sideways for a little Sibby effect), public education is as filled with godless secular humanists now as it was in the 1990s. If condom-loving teachers were responsible for increased teen birth rates, the 1990s would have seen kids having kids at increasing, not decreasing rates (and our K-12 enrollments wouldn't be dropping...).
2. Bushes' fault? The last time the teen birth rate increased, President Bush (41) was in office. Concurrent with the present increase, President Bush (43) is in office. Hmm... see a pattern?
3. Bush's fault: Or maybe the real problem is that the current president ignores science and reason by funding abstinence-only education programs whose effectiveness has been questioned by study after study, expert after expert:
3a. Surgeon General David Satcher released a report in early 2001 questioning abstinence education (as explained by Sean Cahill):
...there has been little research to demonstrate the effectiveness of this particular type of instruction. More comprehensive education programs that also provide information on condom use have proven effective in stemming disease transmission and pregnancy among already sexually active youth. Yet safer sex education has not been shown to increase or hasten sexual activity among youth [Sean Cahill, "Scared Chaste, Scared Straight: Abstinence-Only-Until-Marriage Education in U.S. Schools," The Public Eye, Fall 2002, p. 12]
Bush ignored his Surgeon General and continued handing out abstinence-only education dollars to his friends Leslee et al.
3b. The American Medical Association (those would be smart people known as doctors) officially opposes abstinence-only education and favors comprehensive sex ed.
3c. The American Academy of Pediatrics in 2001 found an increase in contraceptive use and a concurrent decrease in adolescent birth rates. They also found the following:
Abstinence-only programs have not demonstrated successful outcomes with regard to delayed initiation of sexual activity or use of safer sex practices. Effective programs tend to provide practical skills, such as exercising control and increasing communication and negotiation skills through role-playing or interactive discussion. Programs that encourage abstinence as the best option for adolescents, but offer a discussion of HIV prevention and contraception as the best approach for adolescents who are sexually active, have been shown to delay the initiation of sexual activity and increase the proportion of sexually active adolescents who reported using birth control. [Committee on Psychosocial Aspects of Child and Family Health and Committee on Adolescence, (PDF format) "Sexuality Education for Children and Adolescents," Pediatrics (108:2), 2001, pp. 498-502]
For several other sources, see the footnotes to this Wikipedia article. Again, don't trust Wikipedia -- check the sources yourself. Also read here for harmful consequences of abstinence-only sex ed, and check the footnotes.
3d. This science has been available from the beginning of the Bush Administration. Yet the President persists in his irrational anti-intellectualism (perhaps bred as a self-defense mechanism from getting lower grades than the rest of those smarty-pantses at Yale who managed to cheer, drink beer, and still get straight A's) and promotes policies that defy scientific evidence and reasoning. Perhaps when your President ignores science and reason, kids get the message that they can too: "Come on, baby, you can't get pregnant if it's your first time."
Why would a president stand so obstinately against science, even when the policies derived from such irrationality harm kids? Could it be that the president's conservative friends are having too much fun feeding at the federal funding trough? To protect their federal funding, which increased 17-fold from 1997 to 2007, the abstinence-only industry opened a trade association office in DC. Trade association? I thought they were doing public health. Instead, the abstinence-only crowd has become "big business":
Its product is the promotion of chastity through speaking engagements and the selling of curricula and promotional materials. There is underwear emblazoned with “No Sex” on the crotch, T-shirts, pens and bookmarks — you name the tchotchke — but the serious money involves large federal and state grants. The movement is growing and gaining influence. [Camille Hahn, "Virgin Territory," Ms. Magazine (I know -- bastion of liberal feminism, surely not to be trusted), Fall 2004]
And the Bush Administration is happy to protect this big business for purely political reasons:
But the effectiveness debate has largely obscured one underlying reason for the Bush administration's support: politics. Funding abstinence-until-marriage programs allows the White House to reward conservative groups by putting them on the federal gravy train.... Though it flies in the face of small-government ideology, nourishing the nascent abstinence movement with federal funds marks an important shift in GOP strategy to court its restless social-conservative base. [Christina Larson, "Pork for Prudes: How Conservatives Score, While Teaching Kids Not To," Washington Monthly, Sep 2002]
People have a penchant for believing what they want to believe. But to make good decisions -- about sex, about public policy, about whatever -- they need to listen to science and reason. Abstinence-only? Nuts! Let's try reality-only. Even when you don't like it, facing reality is always the right choice.
Funny that control over education on this topic is being pinned on the president and the education institution.
ReplyDeleteAs one of five kids in a family where my parents promoted the value of life, but didn't do much for sitting down and talking about the "birds and the bees" it's time for parents to own up to their responsibility.
It's not the school that needs to direct our kids, its us, the parents, who need to provide direction and open lines of communication between us and our kids. We need to be able to talk to them openly about what we know they will be doing and be willing to accept the fact that they'll have questions about it.
At the same time, our schools should not be directed to educate based on the credo that abstinence is THE solution to the problem. Kids need all the information available to them so they can make the best choices. If we don't tell them as parents or educators, they'll learn it somewhere else.
While I agree with the abstinence only idea one does have to be practical. Can we at least give the basics so that if a teen has a momentary lapse that they are at least educated to be cautious?
ReplyDeleteWhen my older sister was in school there was a huge issue about teaching sex ed to her class. One parent argued that it is not the school's job. "It should be taught at home", the parent said. That parent even went so far as to pull her child out of class for that section.
So guess which student was the ONLY person to get pregnant in my sister's graducating class? Teaching at home is an excellant idea. But not all parents step up to the plate like they should.
Abstinence is not a universally-accepted concept. Nature, horomones and even the Bible promote procreation. Some societies vary in their philosophy and encourage activity at a younger age than our modern US laws and rules dictate. That's why it is so important to educate children from an early age as to what sex is, instill your family's moral and religious principles and give them the tools, educationally, to make good decisions. We can stick out heads in the sand and cross our fingers that teens won't experiement, but the reality is that they do. If we raise fully-educated children and keep communications open, the chance of a surprise or disease are greatly reduced.
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