You’re arguing against me as though I’m making the argument, “we shouldn’t teach sex ed.” I’ve never said that. I think we should teach sex ed, I think abstinence only education is stupid.
My only point is I believe some portion of teenagers are stupid and are going to engage in risky behavior no matter how much education they receive. I never made any factual claims about what portion of teenagers fall into that category.
It’s pretty hard to say the claim, “some teenagers are going to behave in a risky manner no matter what” is false.
At least I haven’t made completely false statements (i.e. lied) like you did when you said that if schools don’t teach abstinence-only to the exclusion of all other forms of sex ed that they lose all Federal funding.
The Department of Education isn’t remotely considered the major source of school funding in this country. In this country the overwhelming portion of school funding comes from the state-level (typically through property taxes.) As an example as to how small this money is, West Virginia is a small, extremely poor state (usually in contention with Mississippi for poorest in the country.)
It has around 400,000 students enrolled in public schools. In FY 2007 West Virginia state spending on education was 1.716 billion dollars. The amount that one state spent was 34 times what Title V distributed in 2007 to all 50 states combined.
Furthermore the state received 337m in Federal funding for education in FY 2007–a figure almost 7 times that of all Title V funding in 2007.
I’m not saying I support Title V, I don’t support faith-based initiatives either. But Title V spending is a pittance, and school districts have gone so far as to reject its funding outright–calling into question how much of an impact it is actually having. I’ve never once argued in favor of Title V in this thread, however I’ve also never claimed it is responsible for the erosion of sex education in this country or tried to link it with the statistic that a quarter of all teenaged girls have STDs.
And hey! Guess what? It does. But clearly, you have a dizzying intellect to have interpreted “federal funding for the classes” as it applies to sex ed as “all federal funding.”
Ok, everyone can calm down. Someone wrote to the “Sound Off” section of the local paper saying that these statistics are just made up by the drug companies to sell vaccines. :rolleyes:
Not to hijack the thread, but to ask a question: my daughter is soon to be 13 and I’ve been reading about HPV vaccine. I’m not naive and understand that at some point in the not too distant future she will have sex. I will discuss STDs with her and the emotional factors associated with a physical relationship, including how nasty boys can be at that age, thinking of my own misspent youth.
How do doper parents of females feel about HPV vaccine?
I do not have a daughter, but I do have HPV because it can be spread even when you use a condom. I’d say get the vaccine. Even smart girls with great self-esteem and good sex education can get HPV.
The general consensus I’ve gotten from doctors is if you haven’t had sex, it’s a good idea, provided the cost isn’t crippling. If you have had sex and it’s covered by your insurance, it’s a good idea.
For older women that have had multiple partners, there’s a good chance you already have it. Depending on the statistics I’ve heard, somewhere between 50 and 90 percent of women 50 or over are infected.
My daughter is getting it. She’ll be 15 coming up shortly.
I guess I’m a bit confounded by the attitude (some of it reflected here) that HPV “doesn’t really count,” since so many women get it. I would think that’d be all the more reason for young women to get the vaccine and be aware and protect themselves. That number can change if those precautions are taken. It seems to be taken as a fact that it’s just there; as if nothing can be done about it. That’s a shame, because it most definitely is not the case.
A part of the reason might be the incredible shyness of young people with regard to anything connected with sex. Do you remember how even seeing a tampon was a source of embarrasment and giggles if you were a girl, and a macho attitude of “ew” or teasing each other with it, if you were a guy?
A bit more on-topic, do you remember from your puberty years how entering a drugstore and ordering a box of condoms, please was an embarrasment nightmare? And how, when you were still a virgin, carrying around a condom, or keeping one in your room, was somehow both ew and pretentious and pathetic at the same time? I asked a couple of friends and they all said that as teenagers, they wouldn’t want to be caught taking condoms in public, not even from a basket on some counter that was handing them out freely. The people in line behind you might notice. Or the clerk. And they might know that “that guy had sex” . Or secretly mock them for thinking they stood a chance of using that condom for anything but making balloon animals.
All that changes when you’ve had sex; then a condom becomes a normal household item. But before that…ooh boy.
No, access to condoms should be private, which is why I still think that a vending machine inside a bathroom stall is a good idea. Even in college.
Even the direct (and I mean DIRECT) threat of death isn’t enough for many to alter behavior.
When I went to grad school, I heard profs talking about teaching in the early 70’s about students that if they didn’t get (I think) a C or higher average would be kicked out of school and likely DRAFTED and sent to VN…and they still wouldn’t study but party all the time. They said it wasn’t the majority, but a larger group than you would think.
But that article only indicates that some kids received abstinence-only sex ed in addition to regular sex ed. And the study indicated no significant difference between the two groups in terms of sexual activity, safe or otherwise.
Just to be clear, I’m all for sex education (we had it in Health when I was in school back in the Dark Ages). And I think abstinence only is a stupid approach, although I do think the wishes of the parents need to be respected. But it doesn’t seem to me that you’ve offered any evidence that abstinence only sex ed is widespread, or that it makes things any worse.
Well, of course…abstinence DOES work…if you can pull it off. Granted, most people can’t, or don’t want to, or aren’t given a choice, but it does work.
Yesterday I got my delightful yearly checkup with my GYN, and she had to do an HPV test (first I’ve ever had in my life). She jokingly called it the ‘good girl test’ and says if I pass, I won’t have to come back for another exam for 2-3 years instead of yearly. Woot!
The doctor said it’s a very minor advantage enjoyed by people who enjoyed differently, early in their lives. I hated celibacy, and I’m reasonably sure I was more than a little crazy by the time I reached 25, met my now-husband (himself also a virgin), and became involved. But I can’t argue with the freedom from disease that awful time in the past has conferred in the present.
See, I went to a high school that received precisely zero Title V dollars, taught a full-on required-to-graduate sex ed course (lasted an entire semester of each 8th and 9th grades, covered STIs and all then-available methods of contraception in great and detailed depth, including pictures - lots of pictures shudder). The pregnancy rate at my high school still fluctuates between 40 and 60% annually, and has for the past 35 years.*
Granted, there were girls for whom 8th grade sex ed was too late because they were already either pregnant or mothers. (Why, yes, there was a girl in my class who had her first baby at 12, why do you ask?) But the vast majority of the girls who got pregnant during high school took the class, absorbed the information well enough to pass the test and still got pregnant. We won’t discuss STI rates. They were amazingly low, actually - less than a third national average - primarily due to the limited “dating” pool and geographic isolation. That’s pretty much a fluke though.
No amount of sex ed (abstinence-only or any other flavor) would have stopped those girls from getting knocked up. Some of them did it on purpose, some of them were sure (because they were 16 and therefore immortal, bulletproof, and armored with the pure faith that “it won’t happen to me!”) that pregnancy only happened to other people. Or, as one girl phrased it, “Only skanky whores get pregnant, and I’m not a skanky whore, therefore I won’t get pregnant!” Her daughter was toddling around the after-Graduation party.
I, personally, think abstinence-only is a laughably stupid way to go about sex education, but I’m also not convinced the other currently in-use methods are functioning any more adequately.
*Small town, rural area. Sample size is fairly small, hence there’s a correspondingly large swing in the stats.
One year when I was in HS, I was showing animals at the local county fair. There is always a big dance one night, and because I stayed in a camper on-site, I got to listen to the cowboys and the ‘ridders’ hanging around outside, drinking beer, cooling off from inside or just waiting for friends.
One line really struck me, spoken by a cowboy type (probably not out of HS yet, or if he was, not by very many years): “Yeah, I’d fuck her, but I wouldn’t waste a condom on her. She’s too ugly.”
I didn’t do any dating in HS. That was one incentive.
But that’s not a good comparison. Having sex with an underaged person is illegal in most states. Solving an algebra problem is not illegal in any state, AFAIK.
Cite? SCOTUS has upheld the right of parents to shield their child from religious education in public schools (or education that contradicts the stated beliefs of a particular faith or sect).
I’m unaware of any ruling that allows parents to pull their children out of mandatory public education (classes) because they just don’t like the subject matter.
Anyway, it’s a fine comparison. Teaching a child how to have sex is not the same as telling them to go and have sex, any more than a shooting course as part of ROTC is the same as telling kids to go shoot up a classroom.
I’ve heard that solving simultaneous equations is a 2nd-degree felony in Alabama.
