Texas—home of the third-highest teen pregnancy rates in the country, the highest rate of “repeat teen births,” and highest state spending on abstinence-only sex edumacation—is “moving away” from abstinence-only sex ed because it isn’t working. But realists in Texas aren’t ready to let go of the “abstinence” brand entirely, as that might excite the Jesus freaks, so the new, reality-based approach to sex-ed in Texas is called “abstinence-plus.”
Both approaches to sex education teach that refraining from sexual activity is the safest choice for teens. But abstinence-only gives limited information about contraceptives and condoms and tends to downplay their effectiveness, while abstinence-plus stresses the importance of using such protection if teens are sexually active.
The latter approach fits the Obama administration’s effort to shift dollars from abstinence promotion to strategies aimed at lowering teen pregnancies.
What the Statesman means by “tends to downplay their effectiveness,” of course, is “lies to young people about the effectiveness of condoms and contraceptives, often with disastrous consequences.” Via ThinkProgress.
Abstinence plus anything isn’t abstinence.
My husband travels around to work in several rural school districts around Spokane, and in the Reardon high school there’s a big poster on the wall that says, “One in six condoms fail.” This is, of course, COMPLETELY AND DEMONSTRABLY WRONG, but facts sure do get in the way of good ole ideology.
Holy shit that WaPo article is horrifying. How did I miss that when it was published!
I took health class which included sex education in 03′ in a high school in the Seattle area. The class was not an abstinence-only class at all. They covered factual and fair birth control methods but they still did stress the fact that all methods have a failure rate other than abstinence.
What bothers me is that abstinence-only education leaves out the facts about birth control. Yet even in liberal neighborhoods of Seattle teaching sex education with progressive methods they still don’t lie about abstinence. None of the sex educators on the left simply forget to mention abstinence or even worse make up facts.
I went to school in Texas, and yeah, lots of babies in High School. The daycare across from our school had to expand from room for 20 children to room for 100 because of demand, and even then, in my Senior year, those 100 spaces filled up immediately and there was a 6 month waiting list.
@6, I hope you are exaggerating, and how big was your school? That seems incredible.
child.. i took a quick glance at that and thought i saw ‘ abstinence brand abstinence pills’..
@7: 1500 students or so. Most of the babies were churned out of the class of 2001 and 2002, too.
Oh, and get this: we were a magnet school for honors students, AP, Radio/Television/Film and Multilingual studies with a top-ranked band program. They relaxed requirements for admission for the class of 2001, though. I think that explains that.
@7 I doubt he is. I went to a 3000+ student body in Fresno and there was a daycare center on campus. The mothers were required to take a class at the daycare learning about being mothers. Like intensive home-ec is how I always imagined it.
@5 Might want to try that critical thinking part again. Sure, a high school football team would be happy with 5 wins out of 6. But what if they intend to play a game as often as they can (once a week, daily, etc.), and a single loss would have potentially life-ruining effects?
1 out of 6 condoms fail is a very scary statistic. Fortunately, it’s also very false (or at least horribly misleading).
But blowjobs and ass-fucking are 100% safe. Just don’t expect to see that sign in the hallways any time soon.
One out of six abstinent teens gets pregnant. I saw it on TV.
My high school in Spokane also had a day care center and a high rate repeat teen births. Our sex education was not abstinence only. Explaining contraception to kids is useful, but many of them could still give a rats ass about actually using some.
@11: Oh, it’s wrong all right.
The one in six claim is based on a study published in the New York Times on August 18, 1987, which has been proven wrong more than once in subsequent years. The research methodology was jacked up, although I couldn’t find a reputable page that addresses that study in particular. Maybe someone with madder Google skills can…?
@12,
No, they’re not.
I don’t think it’s fair to say abstinence only or pro-contraceptive education is as closely related to teen pregnancy as you make it sound, Dan. Living in a town that’s more than 50% Mexican/Central American, I can tell you for sure that these girls aren’t getting pregnant because they are ill-educated about sex and contraception (well, that may also be true, but for the most part they are ‘intentionally’ getting pregnant). If you broke out the kids who aren’t even in school for whatever reason, or don’t speak english as a first language, I suspect you’d see a much weaker correlation between teen pregnancy and sex-ed methodology, which might lead us to a better conclusion about if it is “working” or not.
@17 So, in other words, it’s all the fault of stupid brown people? Any factual information to support your assumption? Well?
@12
110% !
That’s how homosexual men rack up 59% of all new AIDS cases in the USA.
That’s good news!
I live in Texas, and I actually read once that, while there is no law requiring our schools to provide any type of sex-ed, there IS a law stating that sex-ed programs must emphasize abstinence as the “best choice.” Ridiculous. Hopefully this means we’re on the way to that crock of shit being scrapped and rewritten!
It’s good that Texas is actually looking at the real world situation, rather than on what good ol’ fashioned horse sense tells them. Apparently not enough teens are saddlebacking but can’t resist the coitus.
Still, a bigger factor affecting teen pregnancy statistics is not education but poverty, exasperated, no doubt, by difficulties young people have in obtaining contraception, especially since obstructionists are doing what they can to impede such access.
In the meantime, glad to see Texas is coming to its senses, if only a little bit.