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What should public schools teach our children about sex? It can be a complex question, especially when dealing with morals, social norms, pop culture, hormones and health. When students sit down for their sex education, should teachers embrace an abstinence-only policy?
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Abstinence Education is Mis-Named
Well you don’t just hand the rubbers out…
The Teen-Aid curriculum, if it is not misrepresented here, might give teenagers a dossier of information useful to avoiding sexual activity, provided it is presented in a relevant and appealing manner. The problem that crops up from abstinence-only curriculums is what will happen when teenagers ignore the advice of these programs. Yes, some might successfully employ abstinence, the best form of protection, but some won’t—how many depends on what study you invent—and we must increase our effectiveness towards these people. They, unlike their wise counterparts, will ignore the lessons or conveniently forget them when love, romance, and sex barge into the room. In other words, they have that teenage tendency to think irrationally. Some of these irrational teenagers, however, might do a cost analysis. The end result will always include sex. If they were instructed on how to use contraceptives, they might use them to GREATLY reduce the chance of pregnancy and most STD’s. If an abstinence-only program left them in the dark on these devices, then the teenager will have sex anyway.
Of course, a curriculum that teaches about contraceptives should do more than just hand them out. Abstinence is better than safe sex; such a course can give students the information and skills to avoid sex and predators. All that contraceptives do is plug the holes in the abstinence curriculum. Those who can grasp the concepts of abstinence in the heat of passion will not be lured into licentiousness by contraceptives. Those who cannot understand abstinence will have the next best thing we can give them, a comprehensive knowledge of contraceptives that effectively reduce pregnancy.
- The Monk
February 16, 2009 8:21PM
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