wildernesse

Ignorance-Only Education in Texas

Human Rights Watch lists Abstinence-Only education in its 2003 report in the U.S. as a problem because it discriminates against LGBT students and also puts all students at risk.

Teachers in school systems with ab-only education are actively discouraged to talk about birth control or AIDS prevention! I though ab-only was saying "abstinence is the only means of 100% protection" not "abstinence is the only thing we will ever mention". They are not allowed to talk about HIV/AIDS prevention--and are actively promoting the idea that condoms are useless.

The discrimination against LGBT teens might also gain support from this part of Texas' Health and Safety Code:

Here's a dandy for our activists here:

McCAP is the ab-only program in McLennon County, Texas. 124 is the footnote which states:

Can a state program collaborate in this way with churches and not be ignoring CSS?

The whole report is informative and enough to make your blood boil--at least enough to make mine. I hope that those of you in Texas will work on kicking ab-only education to the curb, and the rest of us will have to work on our own states. I will say that even though my teacher spent all of 5 minutes on evolution (and qualified it with a disclaimer) we had to have a week of birth control, condom, HIV, STD,birthing videos, etc. in biology and Health. Not much sexuality ed, but the condom-helps-prevent-a-lot-of-nasty-stuff idea was firmly implanted. Also, the knowledge that you could get free birth control from the health center and cheap testing there. I never thought very much of our sex ed--especially since we had such a high teen preg rate in our school--but it was definitely much better than nothing. And nothing is apparently what most people are getting.

--tibac

EarlFlynn

Absolute madness. When I went to school, sex ed started in Grade 5 (very basic talk about feelings, etc.) and continued all the way to Grade 9, and included information about same-sex relationships, condoms, the varying degrees of seriousness of the different STDs, and so on. And this was in Alberta, Canada's most conservative province, in the 1980s.

I don't recall learning anything about HIV/AIDS, but I believe hardly anyone had heard of it yet. At the very least, it wasn't a huge part of the public consciousness, or perhaps the cirriculum simply hadn't caught up to the phenomenon yet.

I'm not aware of any abstinence-only programs in public schools in Canada, but perhaps they do exist. I hope not - as an adolescent, the sex ed classes were an embarassing but absolutely vital component of my education. I have no doubt they saved many lives and prevented many unwanted pregnancies.

Ab_Normal

I'll have to have a chat with my sister, who has the misfortune to live in Texas. Her son is in the sixth grade and I'm curious what he is (or probably not) learning.

wildernesse

Sex ed started in the 5th grade for us, too. Talking about general puberty stuff--"Your body is beginning to change. . . and this means, yada, yada". In middle school, there was talk about sex, std's, and HIV/AIDS. I have probably seen every movie that Ryan White made about AIDS and prevention.

Biology was the last stop for sex ed in high school--9th or 10th grade, depending. Or Health, whenever you took it. That's the only time I believe pregnancy was really discussed in any detail--but I don't remember learning much in class. Thankfully, I have a brain, access to resources (books, magazines, Mom), and college biology that was nice and thorough about human reproduction.

--tibac

Rusting Car Bumper

I wonder if this is a case of misinformation. I grew up in Texas schools and my school district is by no means abstinence only. I know for a fact its not today.

My guess is that the policy varies widely around the state.

DC

Toto

From the report:

The complaint is that "abstinence only" is allowed, and that it allows school districts to restrict information regarding HIV/AIDS etc.

wildernesse

What part of what you quoted is mis-information?

We all need to work against abstinence-only education where ever we are, because I think that it does our students a dis-service to keep them ignorant about such important matters. Texas does have abstinence-only programs--maybe they are not all the same and maybe they aren't in every school district, but some specific programs in specific counties are listed.

Here is another quote from the Methods section of the report:

If your problem is with my source, Human Rights Watch, why do you think this is a biased/poor source?

--tibac

Rusting Car Bumper

The entire text of 163 from the health code is found here.

http://www.capitol.state.tx.us/statu...016300toc.html

This is a question of autonomy for local school districts. Are you going to mandate this at the State or Federal level?

I have some sympathy for allowing autonomy even if I disagree with their viewpoint.

DC

lpetrich

I wonder what you people were taught about alternatives to "insert tab A in slot B", like masturbation, oral sex, and so forth. One would expect concern for safety to lead to endorsement of masturbation as the perfect sex act. And though oral sex may not be disease-proof, it is essentially pregnancy-proof.

But I am disappointed to not see much discussion of such alternatives in sex-education debates. Consider what happened to Dr. Joycelyn Elders when she proposed discussing masturbation -- the right-wingers howled and nobody would defend her, or so it seemed to me.

wildernesse

I have no idea what you are talking about and how your posts really relate to the idea that the abstinence only programs mentioned are mis-guided. IMO

Yes, this is a question of autonomy for local school districts--and if your local school district wants to implement ab-only education, then you should do all that you can to make sure that factual evidence is provided about sex, the reproductive system, std's, protection, etc. In other words, real sex ed.

Bush wants to expand funding for abstinence-only education and undermine funding for real sex ed. Seems like he's getting close to mandating at the Federal level.

I didn't say that we should overthrow local control--but in your area of local control you should excercise all your authority for what is right. Non-factual and uninformative sex ed isn't good or right for schools to teach.

Thank you for linking to the entire part of 163. The part I quoted is the last thing on the page--and was quoted in the HRW report as something that should be repealed.

--tibac