Abstinence-Only Education Has No Effect
By Justin Gardner | Related entries in Religion, SexualityThe Bush administration just put out a study that tracked the behavioral differences between kids who were in abstinence-only programs and kids who were in a control group.
Wait, kids haven’t changed their minds about having sex? And it only cost us $87 million dollars a year to fund abstinence programs to find that out? Well…I certainly hope we keep doing this year after year instead of spending money on sex education that informs kids about the realities they’ll face when they finally do want to start having sex.
Here’s the deal… this was a win for the religious right. They got a chance to inject religion into the classroom and teach kids that you shouldn’ t have sex until you’re married. And hey, good for them that they were able to try. That’s what makes this country great.
But…the program has failed and we shouldn’t be wasting our money. Agreed?
This entry was posted on Saturday, April 14th, 2007 and is filed under Religion, Sexuality. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.
April 14th, 2007 at 8:37 pm
Was the control group in the study exposed to safe-sex education, or had no sex education at all?
April 15th, 2007 at 8:54 am
Is Abstinence-Only Sex Education Too Explicit?
Once you tell kids to abstain from sex until marriage, you have already told them too much. We need more ignorance about sex, not less.
April 15th, 2007 at 9:16 pm
Okay, but don’t stop at condom-use please.
I want sex-education to be part of the curriculm of your blessed evolution class.
April 16th, 2007 at 11:27 am
Imagine that…telling kids “don’t have sex” doesn’t work. Since when does any kid actually listen to what an adult tells them not to do? Usually it just makes them all the more eager to try out the forbidden fruit.
Wouldn’t it be nice if, when they (inevitably) do try it, they know the basic methods for preventing pregnancies and STD’s? And how to recognize STD’s if they get them, so they get treated instead of passing it on to others?
Please stop the head-in-the-sand moralizing about sex and start dealing with the realities of the situation. In particular, the Bush administration’s abstinence only policy in Africa has been directly responsible for a resurgence in AIDS cases in some areas where it had been on the decline.
May 28th, 2007 at 7:01 am
young people need to be well imformed about sexuallity. they should be told eery thing in details so that the can understand both the advanges and disadvantages of every decision they take in life.
June 2nd, 2007 at 5:21 pm
[...] However, given that abstinence programs have been debunked in this country, I’d like to see the following reconsidered… PEPFAR has come under some criticism for its requirement that part of the program emphasize abstinence education. [...]