From last week's mockery of a sham of a joke of a Congressional hearing on abstinence education comes this telling Q & A that betrays the insanity of those who obdurately support The Bullwinkle Approach:
[HT: Jill Stanek]
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Very telling. The “experts” are obviously against us, yet I still wonder what the best way to proceed is. The studies are all contradictory and so we can only reason from our own experience.
The problem, as I see it, is not the education our children receive, but the culture they live in. When pre-marital sexual experience is the norm, does it make any sense to keep students in the dark about contraception? If kids are going to have sex (and that is a cultural problem, far beyond the ability of the schools to fix), then is it not prudent to teach them how to do this in the way that carries the least risk?
I am very close to my kids and they know the standards that I expect them to measure up to. It has always been our idea to teach them to live in the world, but not for the world. They have always attended public schools, had a wide circle of friends, been exposed to all elements of society and I think this has made them more able to resist the temptations of the world.
When my oldest daughter was in high school she dropped several girls as friends when they became involved in drugs or became sexually active. We didn’t have to tell her to do this: she had just come to realize that this was the smart thing to do.
That was five years ago. Now my son is in the eighth grade and HE knows kids who are already sexually active and claims to know an eleven-year-old who smokes pot (the kid swipes it from his dad’s stash)! Do you really think abstinence education is going to help THOSE kids?
Now my son is in the eighth grade and HE knows kids who are already sexually active and claims to know an eleven-year-old who smokes pot (the kid swipes it from his dad’s stash)! Do you really think abstinence education is going to help THOSE kids?
Dutchman—
I don't think I'm the best person to answer this question. Far better, I think, would be a fellow like David Mahan, who runs a group called Frontline Communications.
I heard him speak at an abstinence educators' conference a few years ago, and he's one of the best abstinence speakers I've ever heard.
Many of the abstinence talks he gives are to kids in juvenile detention centers — kids who he says are, by and large, actually very receptive to his message.
One of his biggest pet peeves is when adults make comments that betray a double standard for expectations, as if to say some kids are essentially past the point (due to various factors — negligent parents, socio-economic status, environment, etc.) of being able to be reached by a pro-abstinence message.
His experiences say otherwise.
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