Triad Today - The Triad's only locally-produced public affairs program

April 24th / 26th

"GOP Aroused by Sex Ed"

After months of debate, the NC House last week passed a bill about sex education in public schools. But the bill had little to do with education, and everything to do with political pandering. Instead of establishing guidelines for multimedia instruction, or setting aside money for teacher training and purchase of instructional resources, the legislature merely appeased a small, but vocal minority of Republicans who won for parents the right to opt their children out of school-based sex ed.

Parents will now be able to choose one of the following three options:

It was much ado about nothing because the overwhelming majority of parents in this country now support comprehensive sex ed. This was borne out by a Kaiser Family Foundation study several years ago which showed that 95% of parents of middle school students said contraceptive methods were “ appropriate topics” for school health classes. In short, parents seem to know what some conservative politicians won’t admit, that abstinence-only education doesn’t work.

The Centers for Disease Control reports that one third of students have sex by the time they are in 9^th grade, but the age for first time sex is much lower in some cities, like Baltimore, where the average first encounter takes place at age fourteen. Also, the rate of teen pregnancy is on the rise for the past two years in a row, with over one million teenagers becoming pregnant each year.

In fact, the United States’ teen pregnancy rate is now twice that of the United Kingdom, and three times that of Canada.

The conservative Republican solution to the teen sex and pregnancy problem is for young people to “just say no”. But statistics don’t support that head-in-the-sand approach. Just ask Bristol Palin, who, despite her Mom’s political leanings, said that abstinence-only education is a bust. Yet, over the past eight years, the federal government continued to fund a failed program, the effects of which were in conflict with the doctrine of fiscal conservatives. That’s because teen pregnancy costs the United States about seven billion dollars each year when factoring in the expense of child care, public assistance, lost tax revenues, foster care, and involvement with the criminal justice system.

Fortunately, the Obama led Congress is about to reverse course, with Senate bill 611, and HR 1551 now in committee. The new legislation would appropriate $50 million dollars per year in support of a program that is now being called “Abstinence Plus”. Passage of such a bill would be a step in the right direction because, currently, one third of the States do not even require public schools to offer sex education of any kind. Dangling federal monies might persuade those backward states to join the 21^st century.

Some school systems have jumped out in front of this debate. South Carolina, for example, is the only state that mandates a certain number of hours schools must devote to sexuality education. The result has been a sharp drop in teen pregnancy. Meanwhile, the city of Pittsburgh’s school board , responding to concerns by parents over rising teen pregnancy rates, voted 8-to-1 in February to replace their Abstinence-Only program with a comprehensive sex education curriculum.

The Winston-Salem Forsyth County school system has also been ahead of the curve in offering a comprehensive approach to Family Life Education. And recently, Superintendant Don Martin released a new birth control video for viewing by 7^th and 9^th graders.

The video titled, “Too Young” was written by Chris Runge and produced by his Cable 2 staff. It is informative without being preachy, and it encourages students to take control of their own bodies. Yes, the video promotes abstinence as the best path for students to follow, but it does so by being frank with kids about the dangers of sexually transmitted disease. In one passage, the narrator says, “A teenager’s body won’t suffer from not having sex”.

But that’s not where “Too Young” ends. After making a case for abstinence, it then goes into great detail about various types of contraception that are available, ranging from condoms to pills, and even periodic injection of Depo Provera, which temporarily stops a woman’s body from producing eggs.

The Cable2 video also includes testimonials from real teenagers who had unprotected sex at an early age, and became unintentional parents as a result.

One young mother told of her baby’s low birth weight. Another lamented that she had to drop out of school, and couldn’t graduate with her friends. And then there was the teen father, who with tears in his eyes, said he loved his baby, but couldn’t pay the rent. These are words and images that will stay with students who view “Too Young”. And, for the record, the video is never shown to boys and girls together. The segregated viewings provide a comfort level that can lead to more open and substantive discourse. Thus far, feedback from students has been positive. So too from local parents, 99% of whom opted to let their children benefit from comprehensive sex education.

And so it would seem that conservative Republicans on the state and federal level have been wasting our time and money on backwards thinking programs that haven’t worked, just so they could troll for votes from a tiny minority of parents.

Their pathetic dogma has cost our country both human and capital resources that we can never recover. Fortunately many communities are now on the right track for preventing disease and teen pregnancy. Now if we could only come up with a program that would prevent diseased minds from running for office.