As most everyone around the world knows already, the US has quite a bit of a schizophrenic attitude towards anything sexual. Videos, images, songs, etc. portraying the subject are everywhere, yet it's a taboo to discuss, especially in a great number of schools' curriculum. This last point is enforced by the fact that the government grants funding to school districts that promise to teach abstinence-only sex "education" instead of a comprehensive, fact-based style.
Very recently (and thankfully) I heard that the school district I live in and went to from 2nd-12th grade broke from the norm, and decided to implement the comprehensive education system back into it's schools for the first time in over 30 years, despite losing out on a significant amount of funding. For this, I happily applaud them, especially for the timing of the matter, since my little sister is currently in this district and has recently hit puberty. This has currently got me thinking back to how awful, fundamentally flawed, and religiously biased (don't get me wrong, I have no issue with people practicing their religious beliefs, I just think it should stay out of public schools and government legislation) that system was when I went through it.
1) The first of two times the topic is "professionally" introduced to students is when they reached 10th grade, a full 5-6 years after kids had already hit puberty. Given by what I personally experienced and saw, not many kids in the district were getting any kind of information on the issue from their family at all. This is definitely not a smart idea, given the raging hormones of a typical adolescent and misinformation of "locker-room talk". The recently implemented system, however, starts in the 4th grade and continues with the classes every other year up to 12th grade, consistently reminding kids over a much longer time.
2) That system promotes ignorance and misinformation. Sure, they'll tell you about STIs and unwanted pregnancies, but that's about it on actually supplying proper information. When stating about what to do when confronted with the opportunity of sex, you will be told to "Just say no" and leave it like that. It's a good thing that teenagers always fall in line and do as they're told and don't act out in rebellion, or do other stupid shit [/sarcasm]. The instructors aren't even allowed to speak about any form of contraception unless it is brought up by students, in which case they will greatly exaggerate their failure rates, claiming that no one should rely on them because of these false statistics (note that in my 12th grade health class, this topic was brought up by a girl who was already pregnant, with another in the room already being a parent, so this is the type of information that they should've received the truth many years back). The tragically ironic thing about them discussing failure rates is that (without exception) they aren't allowed to state that the abstinence pledge that comes with this form of education statistically fails 88% of the time. No question that it's absolutely true that abstinence has a 100% success rate at avoiding diseases/pregnancies when applied properly, but its true success rate is only 12% coupled with the fact such failed pledgers probably wont be using any safe sex practices. To counter this, the new system will still talk about how abstinence is the only true way to be perfectly safe, but will still give out the scientifically proven information on just about all aspects of sexuality and contraceptives.
3) Advocating abstinence until marriage only really worked that well when people were married off in their teens. This obviously isn't much of a factor in the vast majority of the world now, so enforcing this outdated custom when most people (who do marry) now usually wait until their late 20s or early 30s is just insane. If you personally choose to abstain from your own opinions and reasoning, that's fine, more power to you. It just seems to be a really conflicting message supporters spout that sex is inherently evil, but yet suddenly it's not as soon as you get married; pick one or the other, it can't change in morality that suddenly. Plus, debatable as sexual compatibility's importance is in any relationship, wouldn't you at lest want to end up with someone who is at least moderately compatible in that regard instead of finding out that he/she shares absolutely none of the same interests in the bedroom.
4) Much of western Europe handles this topic infinitely better than the US, and yet very few Americans seem to take the hint. America, when compared to countries such as the UK, France, Germany, Netherlands, and Spain, has significantly higher percentages of teenage pregnancies and STIs, much lower use, and in parts of the country, availability of contraceptives (when I went out to try and get my first pack of condoms I had to go all the way across town to find a pharmacy that didn't deny teenagers from purchasing contraceptives), followed by a lot more social stigma and near impossibility of proper communication within families about sexual topics. And despite that most adolescents in western Europe receive comprehensive sex-ed counter to America's majority abstinence-only, both parts of the world are sexually active at about the same time and rate, debunking abstinence-only supporters' claim that extensive teaching about sex promotes increased promiscuity.
TLDR: Teaching abstinence-only has major flaws in my opinion, but why or why not do you primarily support it. Also, what form of sex-ed does your school district, private school, or home schooling currently teach?
CAPTCHA: heated debate. So true...
EDIT: to clarify the poll, the ones that end in "don" were meant to say "don't support", but were cut off for some reason.
Very recently (and thankfully) I heard that the school district I live in and went to from 2nd-12th grade broke from the norm, and decided to implement the comprehensive education system back into it's schools for the first time in over 30 years, despite losing out on a significant amount of funding. For this, I happily applaud them, especially for the timing of the matter, since my little sister is currently in this district and has recently hit puberty. This has currently got me thinking back to how awful, fundamentally flawed, and religiously biased (don't get me wrong, I have no issue with people practicing their religious beliefs, I just think it should stay out of public schools and government legislation) that system was when I went through it.
1) The first of two times the topic is "professionally" introduced to students is when they reached 10th grade, a full 5-6 years after kids had already hit puberty. Given by what I personally experienced and saw, not many kids in the district were getting any kind of information on the issue from their family at all. This is definitely not a smart idea, given the raging hormones of a typical adolescent and misinformation of "locker-room talk". The recently implemented system, however, starts in the 4th grade and continues with the classes every other year up to 12th grade, consistently reminding kids over a much longer time.
2) That system promotes ignorance and misinformation. Sure, they'll tell you about STIs and unwanted pregnancies, but that's about it on actually supplying proper information. When stating about what to do when confronted with the opportunity of sex, you will be told to "Just say no" and leave it like that. It's a good thing that teenagers always fall in line and do as they're told and don't act out in rebellion, or do other stupid shit [/sarcasm]. The instructors aren't even allowed to speak about any form of contraception unless it is brought up by students, in which case they will greatly exaggerate their failure rates, claiming that no one should rely on them because of these false statistics (note that in my 12th grade health class, this topic was brought up by a girl who was already pregnant, with another in the room already being a parent, so this is the type of information that they should've received the truth many years back). The tragically ironic thing about them discussing failure rates is that (without exception) they aren't allowed to state that the abstinence pledge that comes with this form of education statistically fails 88% of the time. No question that it's absolutely true that abstinence has a 100% success rate at avoiding diseases/pregnancies when applied properly, but its true success rate is only 12% coupled with the fact such failed pledgers probably wont be using any safe sex practices. To counter this, the new system will still talk about how abstinence is the only true way to be perfectly safe, but will still give out the scientifically proven information on just about all aspects of sexuality and contraceptives.
3) Advocating abstinence until marriage only really worked that well when people were married off in their teens. This obviously isn't much of a factor in the vast majority of the world now, so enforcing this outdated custom when most people (who do marry) now usually wait until their late 20s or early 30s is just insane. If you personally choose to abstain from your own opinions and reasoning, that's fine, more power to you. It just seems to be a really conflicting message supporters spout that sex is inherently evil, but yet suddenly it's not as soon as you get married; pick one or the other, it can't change in morality that suddenly. Plus, debatable as sexual compatibility's importance is in any relationship, wouldn't you at lest want to end up with someone who is at least moderately compatible in that regard instead of finding out that he/she shares absolutely none of the same interests in the bedroom.
4) Much of western Europe handles this topic infinitely better than the US, and yet very few Americans seem to take the hint. America, when compared to countries such as the UK, France, Germany, Netherlands, and Spain, has significantly higher percentages of teenage pregnancies and STIs, much lower use, and in parts of the country, availability of contraceptives (when I went out to try and get my first pack of condoms I had to go all the way across town to find a pharmacy that didn't deny teenagers from purchasing contraceptives), followed by a lot more social stigma and near impossibility of proper communication within families about sexual topics. And despite that most adolescents in western Europe receive comprehensive sex-ed counter to America's majority abstinence-only, both parts of the world are sexually active at about the same time and rate, debunking abstinence-only supporters' claim that extensive teaching about sex promotes increased promiscuity.
TLDR: Teaching abstinence-only has major flaws in my opinion, but why or why not do you primarily support it. Also, what form of sex-ed does your school district, private school, or home schooling currently teach?
CAPTCHA: heated debate. So true...
EDIT: to clarify the poll, the ones that end in "don" were meant to say "don't support", but were cut off for some reason.
