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I find the title of my post a little elementary school. And that is because abstinence education in our schools makes about as much sense as eating glue.
Have you seen this new PSA? (h/t: Feministing) Its message is to tell your teens to wait until marriage to have sex. (Much of the PSA is commonsense, talk to your teens, but towards the end - Wham! Wait till marriage!)
People, I am 36 years old, and I have never been married. And you better believe I've been having satisfying sex for 20 years now. And mind-blowingly awesome sex for at least 15 or 16 of those years, non-consecutively speaking.
Seriously, our tax dollars are going to a program that teaches that I should still be a virgin! It's laughable!
In my calmer moments, I suspect that behind abstinence education is a belief that it's OK to use this message to keep middle and high schoolers from having sex. That certainly we all know that most people do have sex before marriage - but little white lies in high school for a "good cause," well, that's just how it works.
Except that's crap. Growing up in the 80s, it was drug education that lied to us. And plenty of us saw right through it. For example, marijuana use was not a straight ticket to crack and heroin. When I was a teenager, that was all it took to dismiss the whole drug education in my school as propaganda.
Luckily, I was never interested in drugs. I was much more into sex.
Most teens know adults who have never been married, and they know those people are having sex. They instinctively know that abstinence education is ridiculous.
Meanwhile, they are not getting the sex education that I got in the 80s. They are not being taught about condoms and STDs and birth control and AIDS. You know, with the free condoms and that lesson with the banana, I got one hell of an education in taking care of myself and not doing anything I didn't want to do.
The thing about asking anyone to follow you blindly, is that when they become disillusioned with what you're saying, they're going to follow someone else. When their sex education at school and at home is embarrassingly short on any actual education, teens are going to listen to their friends instead.
What people need, what I got, is facts. Health facts. And an education that says, here are ALL your options, do what's best for you and don't let anyone judge you for choosing to have sex OR for choosing to wait to have sex.
Honestly, when I think about it, it's like the world's gone mad. It infuriates me that our young people aren't getting the excellent sex education I got IN THE 80S. I can't believe that we had such great programs and now what we've got is uneducated teens getting pregnant and getting STDs because no one ever taught them about condoms.
The only thing that kept me sane when I saw that horrid public service announcement was reading Mir's interview with Logan Levkoff about her new book, Third Base Ain't What It Used to Be: What Your Kids Are Learning About Sex Today - and How to Teach Them to Become Sexually Healthy Adults. I haven't read it yet, but it certainly seems to be exactly what's missing from today's "sex education."
I remembered that parents always had the option to remove their kids from sex ed at my school. My advice in the age of abstinence education: Pull your kids out of that classroom and go over real sex education with them instead.
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Related Reading:
What Does the Bush Administration Have Against Gay Kids?
Bush’s new abstinence campaign — your tax-dollars at work
Contributing editor Liz Rizzo also blogs at Everyday Goddess.
