Virginity pledges have been promoted as one method of decreasing early sexual activity and consequently sexually transmitted diseases and pregnancies.
But does it work?
Anecdotally no. Britney Spears was one famous public virginity pledge and yet per her mother she was having sex by 14. I do not doubt that Bristol Palin made some sort of pledge to her folks.
So given this solid evidence that the method not only fails but instead results in more risky behaviors (more unprotected sex) why should any public money go to promotion of virginity pledges or abstinence only programming?
I hope and expect that the Obama administration will do away with abstinence only “sex education”. I deal with the fallout from that ill conceived (heh) notion fairly often at work. Lots of emancipations for unwed mothers, lots of divorces from rushed marriages, some domestic violence and/or substance abuse issues…not a pretty picture. A certain percentage of teens are going to have sex. The rest of them will think about sex a lot and wish they were having it. Keeping the information necessary to make informed decisions from them is a failed policy.
I wish it weren’t just all about sex on either side. I’d like to see teens educated about relationships, commitment, household budgets, living within means, setting longterm goals, saving for and buying homes, responsible use of credit, and all that sort of thing. It concerns me that we make it all about who sticks what where, while ignoring the larger consequences of interpersonal partnerships.
Totally agreed. The only education I got in high school on credit and money were a tiny bit in pre-cal (mostly focused on compound interest), and a nice little chunk in horticulture class, where we learned about how to afford new farm equipment. A mandatory class on Acting Like an Adult would be wonderful.
As a former public school teacher, the “why don’t we teach them this in school” argument really bugs me. Exactly WHEN during the school day, or school year, or which year, or in place of which OTHER mandatory education do you propose this occur? Schools already do dental screenings, head lice checks, sex education, anti-bullying programs, and all manner of other things because someone thought it should be done in schools. I have no problem with any of those things and agree that schools should provide public service to the community. BUT: We get your kids for 6 and a half to 7 hours a day. One hour of that is lost to lunch, recess or other transition time. Either the days need to get longer or we need to pare down what we teach.
Sorry for the rant. Sort of.
When I was in school, middle school students (7th and 8th grade) had to take a home economics class. This class taught child care, cooking, and sewing. I think they should cut out the sewing unit and substitute a unit on personal finance.
There are still oodles of opportunities at most high schools and middle schools for devoting what is now an elective class to a mandatory Life Experiences class.
We could pare down what we teach in some of the general ed stuff - in order to get the “real life” stuff in that people will use. I had a senior social studies course that had some psychology, some sociology, a little econ - basically the whole non-history social sciences set as brief introductions. It was useful to gain an introduction to the supply demand curve - it would have been far more useful to learn about household budgeting for the vast majority of students in the class. Psychology was interesting, Skinner boxes have long been fascinating and I’m not sure how I’d have gotten through life without a basic introduction to Freud - having productive conversations with significant others, understanding the warning signs of an abuser, learning how your own thought patterns can change your emotions (CBT) - much more useful.
Or in the case of my high school, take a useless mandatory class and turn it into something like this. We had a pair of classes called Physically Active Lifestyles (Gym Lite) and Career and Life Management (I still don’t know what this was supposed to be) that had to be taken to graduate. Pretty useless classes, really.
As a high school math teacher, I agree there is a problem with the current “mandatory” curriculum. But “life skills” would be a far better use of resources than trying to heave little Elmer over the hurdle of factoring quadratics for the third year in a row.
To the list of topics already suggested, I would add “What people are agreeing to when they enter a marriage contract.”
I really can’t understand why such a class isn’t standard across the world. I suppose people consider all these things something for parents to teach kids, but so many parents don’t have a bloody clue about them themselves…
Is there a plausible alternate explanation for this correlation?
One explanation that makes sense to me is that kids who take this pledge believe that it’d be a terrible idea to plan to have sex: when they’re thinking rationally, when they’re not in the heat of the moment, they try to follow their pledge. So they don’t obtain contraceptives.
When they’re in the heat of the moment, though, they do what people their at their life-stage have been doing for eons: they follow their biological imperative.
Perhaps there’s another plausible explanation, and I’d be interested in hearing one.
