1) Does comprehensive sex education encourage teens to have sex?
2) Does abstinence-only education discourage teens from using protection?
If you answered "Yes" to either of these questions, you probably know less about sex education than you think. These two bits of debatable conventional wisdom used to have some evidence backing them up. But the newest and most trustworthy research shows they're wrong. Comprehensive sex ed actually delays loss of virginity in many cases. And kids who've taken abstinence ed classes aren't any less likely to use condoms than their peers who didn't take the classes.
A lot has changed in the 11 years since Congress voted to make abstinence-only programs eligible for federal funding. Today, that policy is up for reevaluation and a bill aimed at opening the funds to comprehensive programs will likely be put to a vote sometime in 2008. Before you decide where you stand, maybe it's time you got up to date on the research.
First off, there are many peer-reviewed, published, randomized studies showing that comprehensive sex ed—which emphasizes abstinence and also provides safer sex information—might work. There is far less such evidence supporting abstinence-only programs. But that doesn't mean we can discount abstinence-only entirely. The specific program matters a lot. Fact is, with either abstinence-only or comprehensive, some programs work and some don't.
Why so much ambiguity? According to leading researchers, sex education is a difficult field to study and few people get it right. "The vast majority of the research, whether it favors abstinence or comprehensive, is so poorly done that the results mean nothing," says Dr. Douglas Kirby, senior research scientist with ETR Associates, a nonprofit organization that publishes materials on a wide variety of health topics, including comprehensive sex education.
Kirby, who has researched sex education for more than three decades, has spent the last 10 years trying to solve the problem of inadequate research. Since 1997, he's authored four massive papers looking at the few studies that are credible and trying to find patterns of evidence that point toward a solid answer—research he says favors the comprehensive approach. His most recent report, Emerging Answers 2007, dealt with studies surrounding 48 comprehensive programs. Of those, 40 percent delayed the initiation of sex, reduced the number of partners for sexually active teens, and increased condom or contraceptive use. He says there isn't much evidence that the abstinence programs he looked at did any of those things.
Dr. Stan Weed, director of the nonprofit Institute for Research and Evaluation, which specializes in researching and advising abstinence programs and policy, disagrees. Weed also has several decades of experience under his belt, and his findings—like Kirby’s—are respected in government and academic circles. Weed and his staff have conducted at least 100 studies over the last 15 years, and he says his research shows that the well-designed and well-implemented abstinence programs do delay sex, reduce partners, and prompt teens who've had sex in the past to stop. In fact, a recently published study he conducted of a program in Virginia showed a 50 percent reduction in teens having sex for the first time, when compared to teens who had no significant sex education.
Although Kirby and Weed disagree on how well the abstinence and comprehensive models work, they've come up with surprisingly similar criteria for what makes specific programs effective. No matter what your personal beliefs are or what approach your school district decides to take, there are things you can look for to know whether a program is likely to work. Just ask these questions:
1. How long is the class?
You can't expect to really influence teenagers in just a couple of hours. Kirby's research shows that programs need to be at least 14 hours long; Weed's minimum is 20 hours. Both believe students need the message to be reinforced over several years. "We'd never give kids just five hours of math in seventh grade and expect them to be able to balance a checkbook in 12th grade," Weed says.
2. Who's teaching it?
Teachers matter, and not just in terms of how well they were trained. Whoever is teaching the class needs to be a real leader, someone who kids are comfortable with, look up to and admire. Weed says the best candidates are teachers from the school whom students are already familiar with, rather than outsiders.
3. Is it interactive?
"These programs need to be about more than just providing information," Kirby says. "They need to involve the students in role-playing and other things that will make them think about the consequences for themselves." Successful programs take kids out of a traditional lecture setting and teach the material in many different ways.
4. Does it send a strong, consistent message?
Whether the message is "abstinence only," "the importance of safer sex," or a combination of the two, the program can't present its message as an option or simply provide information without making a statement. Students need to understand that this is not just a way to do things, but the right way.
5. Does it address peer pressure?
No program can be effective if students don't know how to apply what they've learned in the real world. Good programs teach kids how to resist peer pressure and make sure the kids feel confident in their self-worth and their ability to follow through on the program's message.
What's interesting to me is no mention about "after the fact". What happens to those who DO engage in acts that create families. What is being taught in those real cases? Are there responsible parenting classes being presented so family preservation and guardainship is protected so baby abandonment is prevented?
I barely remember sex being taught in school. It was taught at home, and that was a first-hand experience, excuse the bad pun. It cracks me up school boards (made of parents, no doubt) think abstinence can be taught, when the home situations are more than likely something far beyond their puritanical minds!
Religious role-models have proven themselves to be jokes and frauds, of a sexual deviant and money-minded kind.
Politicians are no better, as they walk hand-in hand in lobbied support by their backers.
So what's left to help kids in schools?
Quality teaching has to include good teachers who have the good sense that parenting is a skill that has to be taught SOMEWHERE, because God must surely know, it's not being done well at home.
In the land of divorce and family separation, the statistics prove few children these days are likely to have a very good sense of home-base:
According to enrichment journal on the divorce rate in America:
The divorce rate in America for first marriage is 41%
The divorce rate in America for second marriage is 60%
The divorce rate in America for third marriage is 73%
The divorce rate in America for childless couples and couples with children
According to discovery channel, couples with children have a slightly lower rate of divorce than childless couples.
Sociologists believe that childlessness is also a common cause of divorce. The absence of children leads to loneliness and weariness and even in the United States, at least 66 per cent of all divorced couples are childless.
If this is the audience (student-body) taking sex-ed classes from an older generation, it would make more logical sense to add parenting classes to the curriculum, and eliminate the abstinence info from the syllabus. After all, I'm sure kids being left alone at home while parents are out on dates could use the appropriate information.
Who knows, maybe the next generation can get the family-thing right. Provided someone teaches the kids early enough, not to leave their kids unprotected anymore.
As far as I can tell the abstinence doctrine is part of the religious agenda in politics and has had support from the current administration. The approach is known not to work and known to create more problems than it tries to solve.
This is, I believe, exactly the purpose of the measure. Within the religious right mindset there are the good (those only having sex within the context of marriage) and the bad (those having sex out of wedlock). Those who are good will be rewarded (and encouraged to adopt) and those that are bad will have to suffer the consequence. A simple means as not educating children about sex contributes to the religious agenda to decide who is good and hence "in" and who is bad and therefore "out". It's this exclusion mechanism that is prevalent in the sex education, in pregnancy consultation, in child placement, in warfare and in the prison system.
All the while industries working these problem areas fare well. As problems are not solved by the measures taken, industries have a guaranteed income, only treating symptoms.
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A pop-quiz about what is and isn't being taught to teens
Birds, Bees and Lab Coats
What science says about sex education programs
By Maggie Koerth-Baker
Pop Quiz:
1) Does comprehensive sex education encourage teens to have sex?
2) Does abstinence-only education discourage teens from using protection?
If you answered "Yes" to either of these questions, you probably know less about sex education than you think. These two bits of debatable conventional wisdom used to have some evidence backing them up. But the newest and most trustworthy research shows they're wrong. Comprehensive sex ed actually delays loss of virginity in many cases. And kids who've taken abstinence ed classes aren't any less likely to use condoms than their peers who didn't take the classes.
A lot has changed in the 11 years since Congress voted to make abstinence-only programs eligible for federal funding. Today, that policy is up for reevaluation and a bill aimed at opening the funds to comprehensive programs will likely be put to a vote sometime in 2008. Before you decide where you stand, maybe it's time you got up to date on the research.
First off, there are many peer-reviewed, published, randomized studies showing that comprehensive sex ed—which emphasizes abstinence and also provides safer sex information—might work. There is far less such evidence supporting abstinence-only programs. But that doesn't mean we can discount abstinence-only entirely. The specific program matters a lot. Fact is, with either abstinence-only or comprehensive, some programs work and some don't.
Why so much ambiguity? According to leading researchers, sex education is a difficult field to study and few people get it right. "The vast majority of the research, whether it favors abstinence or comprehensive, is so poorly done that the results mean nothing," says Dr. Douglas Kirby, senior research scientist with ETR Associates, a nonprofit organization that publishes materials on a wide variety of health topics, including comprehensive sex education.
Kirby, who has researched sex education for more than three decades, has spent the last 10 years trying to solve the problem of inadequate research. Since 1997, he's authored four massive papers looking at the few studies that are credible and trying to find patterns of evidence that point toward a solid answer—research he says favors the comprehensive approach. His most recent report, Emerging Answers 2007, dealt with studies surrounding 48 comprehensive programs. Of those, 40 percent delayed the initiation of sex, reduced the number of partners for sexually active teens, and increased condom or contraceptive use. He says there isn't much evidence that the abstinence programs he looked at did any of those things.
Dr. Stan Weed, director of the nonprofit Institute for Research and Evaluation, which specializes in researching and advising abstinence programs and policy, disagrees. Weed also has several decades of experience under his belt, and his findings—like Kirby’s—are respected in government and academic circles. Weed and his staff have conducted at least 100 studies over the last 15 years, and he says his research shows that the well-designed and well-implemented abstinence programs do delay sex, reduce partners, and prompt teens who've had sex in the past to stop. In fact, a recently published study he conducted of a program in Virginia showed a 50 percent reduction in teens having sex for the first time, when compared to teens who had no significant sex education.
Although Kirby and Weed disagree on how well the abstinence and comprehensive models work, they've come up with surprisingly similar criteria for what makes specific programs effective. No matter what your personal beliefs are or what approach your school district decides to take, there are things you can look for to know whether a program is likely to work. Just ask these questions:
1. How long is the class?
You can't expect to really influence teenagers in just a couple of hours. Kirby's research shows that programs need to be at least 14 hours long; Weed's minimum is 20 hours. Both believe students need the message to be reinforced over several years. "We'd never give kids just five hours of math in seventh grade and expect them to be able to balance a checkbook in 12th grade," Weed says.
2. Who's teaching it?
Teachers matter, and not just in terms of how well they were trained. Whoever is teaching the class needs to be a real leader, someone who kids are comfortable with, look up to and admire. Weed says the best candidates are teachers from the school whom students are already familiar with, rather than outsiders.
3. Is it interactive?
"These programs need to be about more than just providing information," Kirby says. "They need to involve the students in role-playing and other things that will make them think about the consequences for themselves." Successful programs take kids out of a traditional lecture setting and teach the material in many different ways.
4. Does it send a strong, consistent message?
Whether the message is "abstinence only," "the importance of safer sex," or a combination of the two, the program can't present its message as an option or simply provide information without making a statement. Students need to understand that this is not just a way to do things, but the right way.
5. Does it address peer pressure?
No program can be effective if students don't know how to apply what they've learned in the real world. Good programs teach kids how to resist peer pressure and make sure the kids feel confident in their self-worth and their ability to follow through on the program's message.
Acts and accountability: a peer review by professions
What's interesting to me is no mention about "after the fact". What happens to those who DO engage in acts that create families. What is being taught in those real cases? Are there responsible parenting classes being presented so family preservation and guardainship is protected so baby abandonment is prevented?
Look at the models we are taught to follow
I barely remember sex being taught in school. It was taught at home, and that was a first-hand experience, excuse the bad pun. It cracks me up school boards (made of parents, no doubt) think abstinence can be taught, when the home situations are more than likely something far beyond their puritanical minds!
Religious role-models have proven themselves to be jokes and frauds, of a sexual deviant and money-minded kind.
Politicians are no better, as they walk hand-in hand in lobbied support by their backers.
So what's left to help kids in schools?
Quality teaching has to include good teachers who have the good sense that parenting is a skill that has to be taught SOMEWHERE, because God must surely know, it's not being done well at home.
In the land of divorce and family separation, the statistics prove few children these days are likely to have a very good sense of home-base:
If this is the audience (student-body) taking sex-ed classes from an older generation, it would make more logical sense to add parenting classes to the curriculum, and eliminate the abstinence info from the syllabus. After all, I'm sure kids being left alone at home while parents are out on dates could use the appropriate information.
Who knows, maybe the next generation can get the family-thing right. Provided someone teaches the kids early enough, not to leave their kids unprotected anymore.
cause and symptom
As far as I can tell the abstinence doctrine is part of the religious agenda in politics and has had support from the current administration. The approach is known not to work and known to create more problems than it tries to solve.
This is, I believe, exactly the purpose of the measure. Within the religious right mindset there are the good (those only having sex within the context of marriage) and the bad (those having sex out of wedlock). Those who are good will be rewarded (and encouraged to adopt) and those that are bad will have to suffer the consequence. A simple means as not educating children about sex contributes to the religious agenda to decide who is good and hence "in" and who is bad and therefore "out". It's this exclusion mechanism that is prevalent in the sex education, in pregnancy consultation, in child placement, in warfare and in the prison system.
All the while industries working these problem areas fare well. As problems are not solved by the measures taken, industries have a guaranteed income, only treating symptoms.