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Originally Posted by Xaccers
I'm saying these schemes to get people to abstaine don't work.
They do more damage than good in that they concentrate on abstainence and don't deal with safer sex, well what's the point if you're not having sex? Problem is, most don't abstain forever and eventually have sex, but then have no idea about contraception or protection.
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Absolutely. They don't abstain forever, so when they do have sex, they know less about safe-sex, condoms, etc etc than kids who had "normal" sex ed (which itself is rather lacking).
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As for sex ed, too little too late. Kids need it before they start having sex not after.
Maybe we should look to Holland for how to educate kids as they seem to have got it right.
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Definitely. It needs to be earlier, & it needs more detail. They need to know about it *before* they start having sex, not during or after. And they need to be properly taught about safe-sex, & what will happen if they do not practice it.
Holland...yeah. Odd one that. Much younger age of consent than the UK, yet a much lower teen pregnancy rate, & I assume they also have a lower teen STD rate than us too. So presumably they have much better sex education than we have in the UK.
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http://www.nhsinherts.nhs.uk/hp/heal..._pregnancy.htm
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England has the worst record for teenage pregnancies in Europe - the teenage birth rates are twice as high as Germany, three times as high as France and six times as high as the Netherlands.
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EDIT again:
Think the UK is bad? Look at the US...
http://www.wiretapmag.org/story.html?StoryID=14691
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If you feel that using the word "contraception" or "condom" is necessary to comprehensive sex education, don't move to Charlotte, North Carolina. The city's public school guidelines prohibit students, teachers and administrators from uttering these words within the walls of a classroom. The tendency to evade discussion and education about sexuality may be why the United States claims the top spot in birth, abortion and sexually transmitted disease rates among teens in the industrialized world, significantly exceeding rates in European countries.
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The United States has 13 times the teen birth rate of the Netherlands, 25 times the gonorrhea rate of Germany and three times the teen abortion rate of France, according to the 2001 National Vital Statistics Reports. American teenagers begin having sex at around age 15, an average of two years earlier than their European counterparts
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President George W. Bush has responded to the nation's high STD and birth rates among teens by cracking down on sex education, proposing a 2003 budget that sets aside $135 million for "abstinence-until-marriage" education programs, according to the California Abortion and Reproductive Rights Action League Web site. The sum is a $33 million increase over the funding for 2002. No federal funding is currently allocated for comprehensive sex education.
Yet San Francisco Stop AIDS Project communications director Shana Krochmal believes that comprehensive sex education is a crucial means for preventing STDs. "It's important for us to be realistic about what teens will do," Krochmal says. "Although abstinence is the only 100 percent effective protection against AIDS, there will still be teens who choose to have sex. Because of this, we need to arm them with the tools that they need to be safe."
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