Shadow Wolf
Certified People sTabber
I am wondering how abstinence only can be justified as the only appropriate form of sex ed. Kids are going have sex anyways, and it's being shown to not be effective.
(Sorry about the columns. I got these from PDF files that I got from Ebsco.)
CDC analysis finds
comprehensive sex ed is
more effective than ab-only
An independent panel commissioned by the
Centers for Disease Control and Prevention
(CDC) has found that comprehensive sexuality
education programs are better at helping teens
avoid unwanted pregnancy and disease than
abstinence-only programs.
The Task Force on Community Preventive
Services, an independent board responsible for
making public health suggestions, analyzed data
from 83 studies published over a period of 27 years.
“Evidence and common sense have returned
to public health policy,” says James Wagoner,
executive director of Advocates for Youth.
Two of the members of the CDC team of
experts dissented from the findings, contending
the data weren’t persuasive: Irene Erickson of the
Institute of Research and Evaluation and
Danielle Ruedt of the Georgia Governor’s Office
of Children and Families.
“Many types of [comprehensive] programs do
not work, even in non-school settings, yet the
recommendations do not identify what those
are,” Erickson says.
But CDC staffer Randy Elder disagrees with
that assessment.
“The whole point of what we are doing is to
aggregate data from as many studies that are critical
to answer the question,” Elder says. “What
[Erickson and Ruedt] were doing was chopping
up the evidence into very fine subsets to poke
holes.” (Washington Post, Nov. 7)
More information is here: The Community Guide - Task Force Findings - Prevention of HIV/AIDS, other STIs and Pregnancy: Comprehensive Risk Reduction Interventions
So why teach it if it doesn't work?Promoting marriage and discouraging premarital sex
through fear and false information remains a benchmark
of abstinence-only sex education. The Heritage Keepers
program repeatedly cites research suggesting that married
people have better sex—and many of these statistics are
attributed to Glenn T. Stanton, director of global insight for
cultural and family renewal and senior analyst of marriage
and sexuality at Focus on the Family.
The WAIT (Why Am I Tempted?) Training program also
depends heavily on moralistic, pro-marriage information
to promote abstinence. The WAIT curriculum includes a
game in which students repeatedly place a transparent piece
of tape, symbolizing a woman, on a man's arm to show that
after several "uses" (sexual acts or partners) the tape is less
clean and perfect. Finally, the teacher is instructed to attach
the tape to another male volunteer and ask, "If this process
gets repeated too many times, do you think it will affect this
person's marriage?"
Such games aren't unique. Why kNOw? includes a game
that compares a stuffed animal named "Speedy the Sperm,"
which represents a sperm cell, and a penny, used to symbolize
HIV. By this reasoning, students are meant to see that if
a condom fails 14 percent of the time with something as big
as Speedy, it clearly cannot effectively prevent the spread of
HIV—which is a thousandth of the size. Despite repeated
and conclusive evidence showing that condoms available
in the United States don't have holes (if they do, the entire
batch is discarded), and that the real reason for error is
improper use, not product defect. Why kNOw? continues
to teach youth that condoms are useless, apparently believing
that this will discourage them from having sex. Predictably,
research suggests that young people who believe
condoms don't work simply use protection less often—they
don't engage in sex at a lesser rate.
-American Humanist Association
(Sorry about the columns. I got these from PDF files that I got from Ebsco.)
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