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Back when I was training to be a restaurant manager, I was given a piece of advice: Never discuss politics or religion at the bar.
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Well, here's another one for that list: sex education in schools.
Our state government, being extremely fond of laws and mandates, is at it again. This time, it's an effort to standardize, to some degree, the willy-nilly nature of sex education, which is now largely controlled at the local level.
The bill currently threading its way through the Assembly, AB-458, would amend, repeal and re-create a law stressing abstinence that was enacted in 2006.
The new bill allows school boards to implement instruction in kindergarten through 12th grade on self-esteem and personal responsibility, relationships, discouragement of adolescent sexual activity and parenting. Information on preventing sexually transmitted diseases and pregnancy could be included, and if human growth and development is taught, the curriculum would be reviewed by an advisory committee of teachers, parents, clergy, students, administrators and health care professionals.
Controversy on the new bill is, predictably, divided along ideological lines. Pro-life groups mostly oppose it, while Planned Parenthood and pro-choice organizations are in favor. Proponents say education will help clean up the state's high STD and teen pregnancy rates. Opponents say it validates risky behaviors.
I was curious about the reactions of parents employed by The Alert. In my family, human growth and development (where everything is and what it does) was almost too much invasion into the moral education my parents took very seriously. In our house, abstinence was the only option. My parents were opposed to what they felt were the liberal leanings of the instructor.
In an ideological scan of the office, one co-worker was cool with education, as long as it was factually presented. Another wanted her children to learn the facts of life from several sources-school, home and clergy-and understand the consequences of bad decisions.
I remember sitting in class, red-faced, while we studiously labeled diagrams of sexual organs. A few boys were cracking jokes, and I thought they were somehow more comfortable and innately knowledgeable. Later, when I read male accounts of the teenage years, I realized many felt just as ignorant as I did.
One thing I don't remember learning about: the law. One of the most glaring contradictions is the state has drawn strict parameters around when teen sex is and is not permitted-parameters unlike the hype that is pervasive on television and in magazines.
Comb through the county's crime records, and you'll see a trend in assault cases. Boy plus girl plus alcohol plus no chaperone equals sex. Girl's parents get angry and blame boy. Boy gets charged. Boy's life is never the same.
The flip-side is that once we achieve sexual maturity, we are designed to seek out, shall we say, reproductive opportunities. If the zero-tolerance approach in sex education (abstinence only) is potentially ending, shouldn't the criminal consequences of teen sex end, too? And is that what parents want?
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©The Chetek Alert 2009
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Rick Machado |
Nov, 05 2009 |
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Abstinence education is designed to keep teens from having sex, not to keep teen girls from getting pregnant.
Getting pregnant as a teen is a function of poverty, sex abuse, violent households and several other adult dynamics that teens have no control over.
In short, teen pregnancy has nothing to do with sex, morals, values, the media, or anything else similiar. It has everything to do with an adult society "pushing" teens into social corners, and pregnancy is one of the responses.
Rick Machado
Public Speaker on Teen Pregnancy
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