Abstinence-only Sexual Education

Pengu · Post by **Pengu** » 05 Dec 2006 15:16

I need to hear from people who have gone through sex-ed in school in the past 5 years since abstinence-only sexual education was instated by the Bush administration. What did they teach you? Were there things you wanted to know more of, but weren't taught in those sex-ed classes?

brian relly · Post by **brian relly** » 05 Dec 2006 15:46

I always did my own research regarding sex, so the abstinence-only didn't affect me much - but here is a paper I wrote on it for school a really long time ago (excuse the horrible essay-skillz; i'm a much better writer now)

[quote]Abstinence-Only Educationâ€”Does It Really work?

"Giving a contraceptive to a teen, either birth control pills or condoms, does not give them a license to have sex. Teaching about contraception does not encourage sexual behavior.
"When youth are educated, they make the right choices. When they're denied education, they have no choice but to make the wrong choice."
Mary Capobianco, CEO, Planned Parenthood of South Palm Beach & Broward Counties
Sun-Sentinel, (Fort Lauderdale, FL), July 9, 2004

In the late 1970's and 80's, the conservatives in Congress dominated the sexual education arena. In 1981, the Adolescent Family Life Act (AFLA), or â€œchastity lawâ€

dp · Post by dp » 05 Dec 2006 15:47

Oh! Pick me!

I had sex-ed last year. It was based as an abstinence only program, and my teacher was very glad to do an abstinence only program, but I think she was forced to use the word condom, so she said something like "If you do have sex, use a condom, but remember, a lot of the time condoms don't work."

I've always felt about my sex ed that it wasn't stopping anybody who wasn't already gonna have sex in the near future, it just persuaded them that condoms weren't really gonna do anything.

In class I was taught that sex will ruin my life forever and that if I do have sex I will either 1. Impregnate the girl or 2. Get an STD.

jon · Post by **jon** » 05 Dec 2006 16:51

The solution is for all the teenyboppers out there to have anal sex. Vanilla sex leads to mutant STI babies.

PegLegHolly · Post by **PegLegHolly** » 05 Dec 2006 20:47

sex ed taught me that abstinence is the only way to not have children or stds.

they did teach us to use a condom if you decide to have sex but condoms dont always keep you from having babies or catching stds.

they also taught a lot about oral sex and the disadvantages.

actually now that i think about it... all i learned about were diseases, pregnancy, and abstinence. they should have taught us more on what not to do... such as ignorant girls use soda bottles, douches, and trampolines after sex to get rid of the semen... that these things wont get rid of sperm.

also no one told me about how over 2000 sperm can fit on the end of a pin, and that sperm can actually stay active in your body for up to 5 days. no one told me that sperm can reach your egg in less than 20 minutes. and no one told me that you can get pregnant even if he pulls out... because sperm is also in precum...

i too had to self educate myself. but i also take the pill. oral contraceptives arent always used for preventing pregnancies. this seems to be almost everyones idea of the pill, although its false. the pill helps a female's cycle stay regular, controls the girls hormones, reduces the pain and mood instability that pms causes, and can clear up acne.

...although its a huge plus that it helps block you from pregnancy... but just like anything else, it can fail. (abstinence does not fail)

jbalexdarkelf · Post by **jbalexdarkelf** » 07 Dec 2006 16:15

oh dear god!

heres what i think about this.

If kids want to have sex it will happen. Hormones is what controls that. And the last time I checked, a high school class cant control those, so therefore,its kinda useless

Slowsis · Post by **Slowsis** » 17 Dec 2006 10:07

Pirate Man wrote:In class I was taught that sex will ruin my life forever and that if I do have sex I will either 1. Impregnate the girl or 2. Get an STD.

They aren't kidding......I have 8 kids, syphillis, herpes and the clap.....and crabs, but they are on me, not in me so they don't really count.

smokefree · Post by **smokefree** » 30 Dec 2006 23:31

I had sex ed last year and i must say it was very indepth. We saw pictures of penis' and vaginas with stds. Learned about condoms, all types of other types of birth controls, diaphrams and whatever. Learned all the body parts, learned who to call for help with birth control bla bla bla. It only mentioned abstinence on the test and about once or twice a day in class.

beenjammin · Post by **beenjammin** » 31 Dec 2006 08:55

How common are std's really? I have seen some horrifying slide shows in physiology and biology. Please say it aint so! Sex rules, have some!

smokefree · Post by **smokefree** » 31 Dec 2006 09:21

Well considering there is so many types of stds and so many stupid people, im sure theres plenty. Strap on a condom everytime ben

And make sure you don't get the clap, condoms wont help you there.

beenjammin · Post by **beenjammin** » 01 Jan 2007 21:50

Condoms dont help with the clap!
You know why its called the clap dont you?

james_dean · Post by **james_dean** » 02 Jan 2007 03:58

I don't. What is it, and why is it called the clap?

I stay safe by avoiding intercourse altogether. Although of course, I'm a christian soooo.... biased

I guess they gotta rage on sex to keep kids safe, but I don't see what's so wrong with teenagers humping all over, from an authority point of view, if they do it safely. Obviously my personal beliefs differ, but why are schools promoting abstinence so bad? Kids are going to have sex, you can't stop them. Makes no sense to me.

smokefree · Post by **smokefree** » 03 Jan 2007 23:34

I avoid intercourse with my powers of nerdom.

Guest_1 · Post by **Guest_1** » 20 Mar 2007 22:51

I apologize for not adding anything. I wrote a 14 page paper on this a few years ago. Let me know if it would add anything at this point

CIC flurry · Post by **CIC flurry** » 27 Mar 2007 18:48

They have abstinence-only sex ed now?? Damn that sucks. Bush is a bitch.

kyle · Post by **kyle** » 27 Mar 2007 22:04

CIC flurry wrote:They have abstinence-only sex ed now?? Damn that sucks. Bush is a bitch.

Ya and one of my best friends got pregnant a several years ago because no one told her this:

PegLegHolly wrote:...no one told me about how over 2000 sperm can fit on the end of a pin, and that sperm can actually stay active in your body for up to 5 days. no one told me that sperm can reach your egg in less than 20 minutes. and no one told me that you can get pregnant even if he pulls out... because sperm is also in precum...

i too had to self educate myself. but i also take the pill. oral contraceptives arent always used for preventing pregnancies. this seems to be almost everyones idea of the pill, although its false. the pill helps a female's cycle stay regular, controls the girls hormones, reduces the pain and mood instability that pms causes, and can clear up acne.

...although its a huge plus that it helps block you from pregnancy... but just like anything else, it can fail. (abstinence does not fail)

Abstinence-only is fucking stupid. Its like telling a kid not to drive because he might get hurt. Theres a good chance they'll try it anyways and a chance they'll get hurt doing it. Fucking teach the kids, so they can 'avoid' getting hurt, while providing abstinence as the safer path.

Fuck, even with my regular sex ed class I didn't even know about cum until it was too late. I can specifically remember asking my teacher at the ripe age of 10 "how can i get stds/preg/ect by exchanging 'fluids'; its not like i'm pissing in her vagina and its not like she can piss in my dick." From which i got a shitload of laughs from the class. The teacher continued by b/s-ing an answer that failed to explain how i could physically get stds/preg/ect. From that point on, my class believed it was a hoax to get us to not have sex. Thank god i didn't fucking get anyone pregnant before i got smart enough to figure this shit out on my own.

Bagira · Post by **Bagira** » 29 Mar 2007 09:30

One of my friends had a teacher who taught the equivalent of the abstinance-only sort of sex education.

The class largely focused on looking at slides of pictures of the very late stages of various venereal diseases and then describing and identifying them. That's why it's the equivalent of the abstinance-only method, since the message in that class was, "Look here. See, this bloody mess of warts, scar tissue, open wounds, pus, gangrene, and Nurgle-knows-what other sick crap can develop if you have sex." The thing is that sex ed. is required to be taken to graduate, so people had to sit through that.

Negative reinforcement can be a quite powerful method to achieve a goal via association.

I sort of pity the guy and whoever was in the same class. Sleeping through it was an impossibility, especially when the teacher was overly zealous about making sure that everyone saw the evil contained within those slides.

While this may be an ineffective method for those few of us who are either desensitized to the biological horrors in this world, I can't imagine what that sort of graphic imagery could do to the average squeamish person...

kyle · Post by **kyle** » 01 Apr 2007 19:50

Bagira wrote:The class largely focused on looking at slides of pictures of the very late stages of various venereal diseases and then describing and identifying them. That's why it's the equivalent of the abstinance-only method, since the message in that class was, "Look here. See, this bloody mess of warts, scar tissue, open wounds, pus, gangrene, and Nurgle-knows-what other sick crap can develop if you have sex." The thing is that sex ed. is required to be taken to graduate, so people had to sit through that.

They do this same thing in drivers ed. They show you a bunch of bloody mutalated accidents to scare you. And thats fine, it has its purpose. It teaches kids to drive w/ caution. But a drivers ed course teaches you to drive as well, where as an abstince only sex ed course doesn't teach you shit. Could you imagine what our roads would be like if we simply showed kids crash accidents in drivers ed without teaching them to drive???

Edit: Request to move this thread to the discussion forum.

Z on the rocks · Post by **Z on the rocks** » 11 Apr 2007 17:13

I took Health last semester, my freshman year. The last 6 weeks of the class was devoted to Sex Education and the like. Trust me this was going to be fun, right. I was in a class 30 adolescent males raging with testosterone. The teacher basically informed us of all of the "parts" and the function of each "part". I go to a public school in Michigan where, yes, Abstinence is taught as the only effective way of not getting an STD or getting a female pregnant. Our teacher mentioned the use of other contraceptives, but didn't reccommend them. The part that I though was stupid was how the class was only focused on intercourse rather than teaching us about oral or anal sex practices.

The class was quite informative, but lacked information which might have been useful for people in my age group, especially males.

At the end of the unit or school police officerr informed us of the laws that pertained to sex and what punishments were and the such.

-Z-

Iron Clad Ben · Post by **Iron Clad Ben** » 16 Apr 2007 07:45

I just read this article on it. Essentially they did a study with a control group and an experimental group. One had gone through abstinence-only, one hadn't. The statistics were essentially the same, regardless of which group they were in they still had the same likelihood of having sex and using protection. Basically it shows that statistically the program doesn't work.

Data has shown DARE to be just as useless. I.e. kids who go through it are just as likely to use or not use drugs in the future.

I'm curious to see if the Bush Administration will try to refute the facts here. I doubt they'll apologize for wasting billions of taxpayers money on this crap.

ABSTINENCE-only education programs meant to teach children to avoid sex until marriage fail to control their sexual behaviour, a US Government report says.

Teenagers who took part in the programs were just as likely to have sex as those who did not, the survey found.

The report, ordered by Congress, was not released by the Health and Human Services Department, but by activists and a California Democratic congressman, Henry Waxman.

The report revived debate on government abstinence-only education programs, which are strongly supported by President George Bush's Administration.

"For both the program and control group youth, the reported mean age at first intercourse was identical, 14.9 years," says the report.

Teens in both groups were just as likely to use condoms or birth control â€” countering critics of abstinence-only education, who say children ignorant of how to protect themselves from pregnancy and sexually transmitted diseases will have more unprotected sex.

For the report, Christopher Trenholm and colleagues at Mathematica Policy Research interviewed more than 2000 teenagers with an average age of 16Â½, living in rural and urban communities. About 1200 had taken part in abstinence-only education programs four to six years before.

"Over the last 12 months, 23 per cent of both groups reported having had sex and always using a condom; 17 per cent of both groups reported having had sex and only sometimes using a condom; and 4 per cent of both groups reported having had sex and never using a condom," the researchers wrote.

About 25 per cent in both groups had already had sex with three or more partners.

"This data supports what a growing body of public health evidence has indicated: abstinence-only programs don't protect teen health," said Mr Waxman. "In short, American taxpayers appear to have paid over 1 billion federal dollars for programs that have no impact.