Teaching Abstinence Doesn’t Work: Palin’s Preggo Kid.

re: Teaching Abstinence Doesn’t Work: Palin’s Preggo Kid.

Dwtintx — Fri, 05 Sep 2008 20:55:10 GMT

I should comment that when I had sex ed in school, it too was very fact-based. I just think that sex ed can be- might not necessarily be, but can be- inclusive of value judgments, and on that basis, I can understand the desire to maybe keep it out of schools. The "celebratory" comment was just my extrapolation of the conservative perspectives I've read.

And Cole, thanks for allowing my comments- I swear I'm not spam! ;)

re: Teaching Abstinence Doesn’t Work: Palin’s Preggo Kid.

Alice — Fri, 05 Sep 2008 20:38:49 GMT

All of my friends and I screwed around in high school. Luckily, one of our moms worked at Planned Parenthood so we got on the pill. One gal in my class, a professional gospel singer since childhood, got knocked up in 10th grade by a black kid. Talk about freaking out. So we took up a collection to pay for her abortion. I even had to ask my boyfriend to pony up. I guess her parents forgot to give her the talk that pulling out does not work and neither does douching afterwards. Oh, I went to a very expensive private school in the US. Most of the grads went on to Ivy League schools or good universities. However, since the school was in a very Republican area no sex ed was taught and the local Planned Parenthood office where lots of the poor women went for prenatal care was bombed. Luckily, the women and their babies were not there at the time.

re: Teaching Abstinence Doesn’t Work: Palin’s Preggo Kid.

Fri, 05 Sep 2008 19:36:57 GMT

I'm with Dwtintx. Theoretically (ask me again in a few years), I won't care within reason what my son hears in school because we'll have already talked about it at home.

He's his own person and will make his own decisions, which may or may not coincide with what I think he's doing, so I want him to know, in the event he decides to be sexually active, what precautions to take.

On the other hand, I don't feel like it's unreasonable to hold abstinence as the expected standard. My husband and I waited, and nothing shriveled up or fell off. I never have understood why it's considered superhuman in teenagers to keep their pants on.

re: Teaching Abstinence Doesn’t Work: Palin’s Preggo Kid.

LogicalMama — Fri, 05 Sep 2008 19:34:32 GMT

When I had sex ed in high school it was very educational. There was absolutely no judgement involved in the teaching, just the real facts. Body parts, how they work, what happens in conception, pregnancy, ect. and how to prevent pregnancy. This should absolutely be taught at school as well as at home. You can't expect that all parents are going to teach it educationally, as well as instilling any values. As well, with all these teenage parents that don't even know all there is to know, how can we expect them to impart the information to their children when they are children themselves-- and in the case of the Palin's, high school drop outs!

re: Teaching Abstinence Doesn’t Work: Palin’s Preggo Kid.

Bunny — Fri, 05 Sep 2008 19:28:09 GMT

Hear, hear, Cole!

<i>I think a main Republican criticism is that sex ed as it is taught in schools tends to be more celebratory of sex, rather than taking the tone of discouraging sex but also offering information if kids do choose to have sex.</i>

I would love to hear someone who had a normal sex-ed class in high school say that sex-ed "celebrated" sex. As someone who had regular sex-ed, I can tell you that all they did was make sex sound gross and dangerous - "AIDS! Herpes! Syphilis! The boogeyman!" There was no celebration here; they presented sex as something only a degenerate would want to do, and then offered descriptions of all the ways to protect yourself from the inevitable results of being a degenerate (sex was presented as something that, if you didn't protect yourself, would result in death and/or babies). Abstinence was heavily emphasized along with birth control.

And y'know what? With all that naughty, naughty information, I held out until after I'd been out of high school for a while.

The people who think sex ed shouldn't be in schools are mightily deluded.

re: Teaching Abstinence Doesn’t Work: Palin’s Preggo Kid.

Dwtintx — Fri, 05 Sep 2008 18:27:02 GMT

Okay, clearly I am too impatient. Sorry for the multiple posts! I'll shut up now...

re: Teaching Abstinence Doesn’t Work: Palin’s Preggo Kid.

Cole Gamble — Fri, 05 Sep 2008 18:12:13 GMT

sorry, Dwtintx, the commenting system was registering you as spam for some reason. I went ahead and manualy approved your comments so they should all be up their now.

re: Teaching Abstinence Doesn’t Work: Palin’s Preggo Kid.

Dwtintx — Fri, 05 Sep 2008 18:00:04 GMT

I wrote out a long comment that appears to have gone away, but it basically said that though I agree that abstinence only education is stupid, a main criticism from the conservative side is that sex ed should be taught in the home by the parents, on the idea that parents should be the ones to impart values as they see fit, and that sex ed is often fraught with value judgments. The thought is that not only should the government not be in the business of teaching values (in public schools) at all, but the tendency, from the conservative perspective, is to emphasize the wrong values, of glorifying sex rather than discouraging it.

Anyway, the point of my post was that I could see that perspective and not necessarily disagree with it. But I still think the idea that teaching kids about sex ed is going to make them run off and have sex is stupid.

re: Teaching Abstinence Doesn’t Work: Palin’s Preggo Kid.

Dwtintx — Fri, 05 Sep 2008 17:40:29 GMT

Also, I completely agree with Mary's second paragraph (her first, too, but I think I covered that).

re: Teaching Abstinence Doesn’t Work: Palin’s Preggo Kid.

Dwtintx — Fri, 05 Sep 2008 17:39:38 GMT

I'm not in favor of abstinence only education, but I think a primary Republican objection to sex ed in schools is that sex ed should be taught at home, by parents, and has no place in schools, on the theory that it should be up to parents to decide what values to impart to their children. And teaching sex ed can be, and often is, fraught with value judgments. I think a main Republican criticism is that sex ed as it is taught in schools tends to be more celebratory of sex, rather than taking the tone of discouraging sex but also offering information if kids do choose to have sex.

I actually don't particularly care what gets taught in schools, because I plan to fully educate my kids about sex and birth control and disease protection. I agree that expecting kids not to have sex is foolish and that we should give them as much information as possible. But I do kind of see where a conservative perspective is coming from- that sort of thing really should be discussed among families, I think. The government shouldn't take on that role. (The whole idea that even exposing kids to sex ed will make them run off and get nekkid is stupid, though.)

re: Teaching Abstinence Doesn’t Work: Palin’s Preggo Kid.

Cassie — Fri, 05 Sep 2008 17:39:26 GMT

I htink Zoey 101 and Harveys Bristol Cream are awesome. Finally teen pregnancy is cool and you get a bonus tatoo on your finger for it! NO more adoption plans, waiting until marriage, leaving babies in toilets at the prom, or age of consent. Being pregnant in high school is cool and accepted, not just accepted but embraced, by the GOP. Parents everywhere should rejoice, they will soon be grandparents.

re: Teaching Abstinence Doesn’t Work: Palin’s Preggo Kid.

Mary — Fri, 05 Sep 2008 17:18:45 GMT

I agree with everything here -- except one point -- wholeheartedly. I was taught abstinence, given James Dobson books, and shown graphic pictures of venereal disease in health class and told that THIS COULD HAPPEN TO ME, and the only impact was to make me deathly paranoid of VD. (Which is not an entirely bad thing.) In other words, scary Baptist-style abstinence-only sex ed didn't stop me from having sex. I doubt that anything could have.

That said, I still don't see why Bristol Palin needs to be dragged into this. She's anecdata. If you want an illustration of the fact that abstinence-only doesn't work, just look at the statistics. Life already sucks right now for this girl; let's not make it worse.

re: Teaching Abstinence Doesn’t Work: Palin’s Preggo Kid.

Manjari — Fri, 05 Sep 2008 16:55:08 GMT

You said it, Cole!!