YouthNoise | WGO: Sex Ed: Gone...and Forgotten?

Sex Ed: Gone...and Forgotten?

According to the People and NBC Release Poll on Teen Sex, February 19, 2005:

41% of 15- to 16-year-olds report that they are sexually active -- but 67% of teens have never learned about sex from a teacher or nurse at school.
14% of 13- to 14-year-olds claim to be having sex -- but 72% of teens have never learned about sex from a church leader, and 46% have learned nothing about it from a sibling.

Is there a pattern here?
According to a January People magazine/ NBC poll, the "National Survey of Young Teens Sexual Attitudes and Behaviors," these are the numbers of today's sexually active teens. If these teens had little to no education about sex, how were they able to become sexually active? Oh yes, parents!

Parents must have been teaching them, right?
Maybe not. The poll also interviewed the parents of the teens. While only 2% of them claimed they'd never spoken about sex to their children, 18% of the teens reported that their parents had never raised the issue.

Is a teen's best source of information his or her friends?
As for friends, the poll seemed to be split evenly four ways from having never talked about sex to having talked a lot about it.

The central question is this: Who is teaching these teens about sex?
What about condoms? STDs? Pregnancy? Who are they supposed to turn to even learn what a healthy intimate relationship is supposed to be like?

So, who cares?
Out of the parents surveyed, 8% had no concern about their children knowing how to deal with sexual relationships. 13% did not care about their teens knowing how to set limits in intimate relationships, while 11% did not think it was important to understand consequences involved with sexual relationships. Moreover, a whopping 83% thought their children had never gone beyond kissing!

	oOMentalPillsOo relates: "...i like being friends with benifits but i don't want to be used."

Clueless? Yeah.

But wait -- it doesn't stop there! Congress wants to keep kids in the dark regarding sex. In 1981 they passed the Adolescent Family Life Act, which promoted "chastity education" and "self-discipline." They even made it religious, suggesting that teens take "Christ on a date" as a chaperone! The Supreme Court made Congress delete the religious wording twelve years later, but abstinence-only programs held on.

According to Planned Parenthood, "Abstinence-only programs often promote alarmist misinformation about sexual health and force-feed students religious ideology that condemns, homosexuality, masturbation, abortion, and contraception. In doing so, they endanger students' sexual health."

The Bush Administration is also bent on making sex ed a mere memory, enforcing abstinence-only education. In 2005, they appointed $170 billion to abstinence-only programs (while they cut others). This actually hurts other sex-ed programs.

The New York Times reports: "Because of the requirement that states match federal funds for abstinence-only programs, state dollars that previously supported comprehensive, medically accurate sexuality education -- which includes but is not limited to abstinence-education -- have been diverted to abstinence-only programs."

The answer? Consider the Tootsie Pop question!
So exactly who is supposed to teach today's teens about sex? Maybe it's like the Tootsie Pop question: The world may never know.

If parents don't, teachers can't, and religious leaders and Congress won't if it isn't abstinence-only, the only sources left are the ones raising the questions to begin with!

Teens will rock on...
One thing is for certain: teens have had sex for centuries and they will surely keep having it for centuries to come. If we are to combat the consequences involved -- such as AIDS, teen pregnancy, other STDs and a slew of other problems -- that we so adamantly claim to care about, shouldn't we start at the source?



		• How Do You Keep It Out? • Top 10 Things Teens Want You to Know About Preventing Pregnancy • "Sex Ed Tends to Build Up Curiosity" • Face Off: What Do You Think About the Whole Abstinence Thing?