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Topic:
Time to grow up - an end to the folly of abstinence only sex ed?
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J-Rod
Registered:
Jul '04
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Date Posted:
1/2 8:31pm
Subject:
RE: Time to grow up - an end to the folly of abstinence only sex ed?
- Date Edited:
1/2 8:37pm (1 edits total)
Edited By:
J-Rod
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LostOnHoth posted:
PIP: In Georgia, in the US, students who take part in a sex education program for eighth-graders called "Postponing Sexual Involvement" are 5-15 times less likely than their peers to start having sex in the ninth grade. In the US, 30% of babies born are born to unwed mothers, and 80% of the children born to unwed high-school dropouts grow up in poverty. This fact takes a great toll on the children and on society. The new sex education program began when its director, Dr. Marion Howard, realized that the traditional method of disseminating birth control information in sex education classes resulted in students acquiring a great deal of knowledge about contraception but not using it. She then noted the success of an antismoking program which used older teenagers as role models, and she learned that the young mothers wanted to know how to say no to sex without hurting a boyfriend's feelings. The new program, which reaches all eighth graders in Atlanta, begins with discussions of anatomy and contraception and then focuses on the risks of sexual activity, sexual pressures in society, and peer pressure . Older teenagers help the students discuss some of the "lines" that boys and girls use to pressure each other and help the students practice how to resist this pressure. Both the students and the teen counselors have benefitted from their involvement with this course.
* My emphasis. Does this sound familiar as well?
Sure. But again what's the point if kids have but neglect to use the information?
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J-Rod
Registered:
Jul '04
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Date Posted:
1/2 8:36pm
Subject:
RE: Time to grow up - an end to the folly of abstinence only sex ed?
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dizfactor posted:
J-Rod posted:
Both the students and the teen counselors have benefitted from their involvement with this course.
Any evidence for that claim on the part of the reporter? Any tangible results from the program? If there are, any way to figure out which results came from encouraging teens not to have sex and which came from the sex ed part?
I dunno, I've been trying to find evidence for effectiveness of any programs...much less the claims of a reporter.
As far as tangible results go, what are the tangible results of any programs on STD's?
And I'll have to retract, for now, my statements about morals increasing the effectiveness of sex ed until I can relocate the link. But it is still my opinion.
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dizfactor
Registered:
Aug '02
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Date Posted:
1/2 8:46pm
Subject:
RE: Time to grow up - an end to the folly of abstinence only sex ed?
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J-Rod posted:
As far as tangible results go, what are the tangible results of any programs on STD's?
They're in the articles Quix posted, which you were very happy to trumpet until you realized they made the case for our side, and not yours. Also, a million other places.
J-Rod posted:
And I'll have to retract, for now, my statements about morals increasing the effectiveness of sex ed until I can relocate the link. But it is still my opinion.
Never let something as trivial as the facts get in the way of a good opinion, eh, J-Rod? 
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DeathStar1977
Registered:
Jan '03
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Date Posted:
1/2 8:57pm
Subject:
RE: Time to grow up - an end to the folly of abstinence only sex ed?
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Whatever J-Rod. Get your arse over to the election thread and give us some predictions/opinions.
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J-Rod
Registered:
Jul '04
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Date Posted:
1/2 9:27pm
Subject:
RE: Time to grow up - an end to the folly of abstinence only sex ed?
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On my way!!!!!!!!!!!
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Dingo
Registered:
Apr '01
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Date Posted:
1/4 6:24am
Subject:
RE: Time to grow up - an end to the folly of abstinence only sex ed?
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J-Rod posted:
This brings the question that I've been asking: For the very few who don't know where babies come from, is it worth it to put everyone through a sex-ed class that contains no morals? Particulaly when Quix posted studies that show the most effective sex-ed contains both information and morals.
The thing is that your morals and my morals on this particular issue are (from what I've read through this thread and similarly related ones) fairly different, yet in regards to the aims of reducing pregnancy and communicable diseases both, both choice frameworks are likely to lead to similar ends.
Two questions I have for you are that if there was a specific moral code that was shown to have an effective impact on teen pregnancies and disease spread yet was different to that which you want your children taught, would you have a problem with it?
Secondly, what would be the issues that you see in going with a two pronged approach that looks at teaching the facts and fictions (with maybe a little coverage of some of the general moral stances in regards to sex in current society) and then involving the parents/guardians/families of the students in actively teaching the moral component?
Just to be clear, I'm genuinely interested.
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Alpha-Red
Registered:
Apr '04
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Date Posted:
1/6 9:54pm
Subject:
RE: Time to grow up - an end to the folly of abstinence only sex ed?
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I read a sex ed book a while back that took a pretty religious and moralistic approach to it, but despite this it also included a little addendum that sorta went: "If you decide to go ahead and do it anyway, we still don't want you to transmit any diseases or get yourself/someone else pregnant so we recommend using protection". As far as I care, isn't this pretty much as good of an explanation as anyone needs?
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Jedi_Keiran_Halcyon
Registered:
Dec '00
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Date Posted:
1/6 10:10pm
Subject:
RE: Time to grow up - an end to the folly of abstinence only sex ed?
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J-Rod posted:
Sure. But again what's the point if kids have but neglect to use the information?
Why bother teaching teenagers how to drive safely if they're just going to speed anyway? 
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Darth_Overlord
Registered:
Jul '01
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Date Posted:
1/14 9:38am
Subject:
RE: Time to grow up - an end to the folly of abstinence only sex ed?
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Jediflyer posted:
J-Rod posted:
But...I thought the whole reason to teach sex was to keep our children safe. If one method of teaching is better at that objective then there is no reason to teach it with an inferior method.
Wearing a seatbelt is an inferior method of preventing injuries due to car accidents than not riding in a car at all, but telling everyone not to ride in cars is not a solution and it certainly won't prevent more injuries than teaching people the importance of buckling up.
Except seatbelts are universally agreed to be a moral means to a moral end. Not so with contraception-- which, by the way, are not manufacured for the purposes of preventing disease but rather to avoid pregnancy. That STDs can be avoided since fluids are not exchanged is more of a secondary effect. If we were talking about simply something to make sex more hygenic there would be no issue.
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dizfactor
Registered:
Aug '02
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Date Posted:
1/14 11:16am
Subject:
RE: Time to grow up - an end to the folly of abstinence only sex ed?
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Darth_Overlord posted:
Except seatbelts are universally agreed to be a moral means to a moral end. Not so with contraception
I have to wonder about someone who would not concede that preventing the spread of infectious disease is a moral end.
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Darth_Overlord
Registered:
Jul '01
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Date Posted:
1/14 11:19am
Subject:
RE: Time to grow up - an end to the folly of abstinence only sex ed?
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dizfactor posted:
Darth_Overlord posted:
Except seatbelts are universally agreed to be a moral means to a moral end. Not so with contraception
I have to wonder about someone who would not concede that preventing the spread of infectious disease is a moral end.
Yes but the contention is with the means.
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dizfactor
Registered:
Aug '02
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Date Posted:
1/14 11:45am
Subject:
RE: Time to grow up - an end to the folly of abstinence only sex ed?
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Darth_Overlord posted:
dizfactor posted:
Darth_Overlord posted:
Except seatbelts are universally agreed to be a moral means to a moral end. Not so with contraception
I have to wonder about someone who would not concede that preventing the spread of infectious disease is a moral end.
Yes but the contention is with the means.
There's no rational basis for any objection to the means. Public health issues must be decided solely on the basis of reason and evidence.
1) People have sex. This is a fact.
2) Sex can transmit diseases. This is also a fact.
3) Condoms can prevent the transmission of disease through sex. This is also a fact.
4) Availability of condoms and education on their use has a demonstrated and statistically significant impact on the transmission of STDs. This is also a fact.
1 + 2 + 3 + 4 = Case closed.
We don't need universal agreement to proceed, or, to put the shoe on the other foot, you do not have the right to veto important public health measures based solely on your arational private religious beliefs.
To create a parallel example, many people believe that eating meat is immoral. The FDA puts in place guidelines and regulations regarding the processing of and handling of meat, regulations which have been effective at cutting down the public health risk of things like salmonella and trichinosis and E. coli. Vegetarians do not have the right to demand that we rescind all meat-related safety measures on the grounds that they believe we shouldn't be eating meat at all.
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Darth_Overlord
Registered:
Jul '01
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Date Posted:
1/14 1:10pm
Subject:
RE: Time to grow up - an end to the folly of abstinence only sex ed?
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That really doesn't make for a parallel case at all. The vegetarian has a problem with the ends (eating meat) and thus the matter of the means of meat processing is irrelevant. A better example would be ESCR. No one objects to curing any of the diseases that ESCR has the potential to cure, but they object to the means. A moral means is proposed (adult stem cells) but it's rejected because it is more difficult and less effective. To that, however, I say the ends don't justify the means.
What is arational is the idea of "private religious beliefs" as it goes against the law of non-contradiction. If meat eating is as bad as murder as the vegetarians claim, then it should be put to an end immediately. If it is not, then by all means eat your steak. But it is complete nonsense that it is both moral and immoral at the same time.
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CitizenKane
Registered:
Aug '04
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Date Posted:
1/14 1:39pm
Subject:
RE: Time to grow up - an end to the folly of abstinence only sex ed?
- Date Edited:
1/14 1:43pm (1 edits total)
Edited By:
CitizenKane
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dizfactor posted:
1) People have sex. This is a fact.
2) Sex can transmit diseases. This is also a fact.
3) Condoms can prevent the transmission of disease through sex. This is also a fact.
4) Availability of condoms and education on their use has a demonstrated and statistically significant impact on the transmission of STDs. This is also a fact.
1 + 2 + 3 + 4 = Case closed.
We don't need universal agreement to proceed, or, to put the shoe on the other foot, you do not have the right to veto important public health measures based solely on your arational private religious beliefs.
To create a parallel example, many people believe that eating meat is immoral. The FDA puts in place guidelines and regulations regarding the processing of and handling of meat, regulations which have been effective at cutting down the public health risk of things like salmonella and trichinosis and E. coli. Vegetarians do not have the right to demand that we rescind all meat-related safety measures on the grounds that they believe we shouldn't be eating meat at all.
I agree with the logic presented here. But it stands to reason also that:
1) People do not HAVE to have sex. This is a fact.
2) Not having sex cannot give you a STD. This is also a fact.
3) Abstinence is foolproof, whereas condoms are not. Again, fact.
4) You will never meet an individual who was abstinent, who chose their mates similarly, who had an STD. Ta-dah, fact.
EDIT: Oh, and just to stop this dodge in its tracks, I am of course aware that STD's can be contracted through non sexual ways. So when I say one cannot contract a STD when abstinent, I am excepting such cases.
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CitizenKane
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dizfactor
Registered:
Aug '02
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Date Posted:
1/14 2:35pm
Subject:
RE: Time to grow up - an end to the folly of abstinence only sex ed?
- Date Edited:
1/14 2:36pm (1 edits total)
Edited By:
dizfactor
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Darth_Overlord posted:
What is arational is the idea of "private religious beliefs" as it goes against the law of non-contradiction. If meat eating is as bad as murder as the vegetarians claim, then it should be put to an end immediately. If it is not, then by all means eat your steak. But it is complete nonsense that it is both moral and immoral at the same time.
Only if you believe in the idea of universal objective morality. Since there's no reason to believe in that, either, "morality" is simply a matter of subjective opinions, cultural influences, and preferences. Morality has no objective weight. It's a concept developed by humans for human purposes, purposes which vary along cultural lines as an adaptation to different cultural circumstances.
CitizenKane posted:
People do not HAVE to have sex. This is a fact.
Not really, no, it's not. You're presuming a level of conscious agency not in evidence. It's a common error, in that human agency is generally wildly overstated by those people who are uncomfortable with the idea that they're basically along for the ride in a deterministic process.
Take any sufficiently large group of adult humans with intact genitals together, allow them to interact over time, and statistically speaking, it is inevitable that they will have sex with each other.
Human behavior on the scale of the community is statistically predictable. You assert that individual humans could, in some theoretical sense, all choose individually to abstain from sexual relations, but the observed data is that they will not, in practice, so choose. They never have, and there's no evidence to suggest that they ever will. No conscious social intervention has ever changed that, despite many attempts to do that in many different cultures and time periods.
If we know they will not, and we know they never have, your assertion that they "could" is akin to saying that we all have the capacity to levitate ourselves with the telekinetic power of our minds, we simply don't choose to do so.
I would argue that there's no reason whatsoever to believe that humans in general actually have the capacity to abstain from sex. Along with the needs for food, water, and oxygen, the need for sex is an evolutionary imperative, and no matter what you do, humans will have sex.
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