In a short item, the Associated Press gives us the shocking report that teaching abstinence doesn't work:
Students who participated in sexual abstinence programs were just as likely to have sex as those who did not, according to a study ordered by Congress. Also, those who attended one of the four abstinence classes reviewed reported having similar numbers of sexual partners as those who did not attend the classes. And they first had sex about the same age as other students — 14.9 years, according to Mathematica Policy Research Inc.
Of course, that's what we've been saying all along, those of us with more sense than a rock:
The federal government spends about $176 million a year promoting abstinence until marriage. Critics have repeatedly said they did not believe the programs worked.
But not surprisingly, the fanatical morons who really believe they can get kids to ignore their hormones — and the urges that the very God they believe in put there — say we shouldn't be too hasty here:
Bush administration officials cautioned against drawing sweeping conclusions from the study, saying the four programs were some of the very first established after Congress overhauled the nation’s welfare laws in 1996. Officials said one lesson they learned from the study was that the abstinence message should be reinforced in subsequent years.
Right, that's it: what we're spending all that money on doesn't work because we need to spend more money on it! Of course. But one official seems to have a better answer, which we can get by reading between the lines of a very strained analogy:
“This report confirms that these interventions are not like vaccines,” said Harry Wilson, associate commissioner of the Family and Youth Services Bureau at the federal Administration for Children and Families. “You can’t expect one dose in middle school, or a small dose, to be protective all throughout the youth’s high school career.”
That's it! Kids need an ongoing intervention, continued, ongoing doses of drugs, all the way from middle school 'til... well, 'til marriage, one could figure. And so that's it: forget about the “education”; let's just drug them, and take away their sexual interest. Simple. Effective.
Problem solved. Thank God!
4 comments:
I don't understand in this day and age why they still advocate abstinence. All you have to do is turn on MTV and you practically have soft core porn videos. Hell even the ex president got more popular after he got a hummer in the oval office.
More education on STDs and contraceptives seem to be the smarter way to go, rather than making kids sit through a class while they roll their eyes and think about how they are gonna "do it" just so they can prove they can do what the adults do, defiant as young people usually are.
Of course this probably won't happen, they will continue to wast tax payers dollars and be in denial that our children actually do grow up and have normal human urges. Idiots!
Most excellent post and blog! I dunno but abstinance to me as a youth was simply silliness. The fear of being a parent at 18 was scary however.. hmmmm
Gorthos
www.gorthos.com
Well I have to say that this is a big surprise/sarcasm. I recently had a fun debate with someone who was insisting that these programs WORK! and I shouldn't be so quick to ridicule them.. (completely missing the point I was making that I don't agree with the goal in the first place and certainly don't think some of the shit they teach in class justifies it, but that's beside the point) and I should seek out the studies that proved it works, but don't rely on anything the "Liberal" media says. Oh and they didn't provide any links. It would be interesting to see what they think of this.
Michelle says...
«that I don't agree with the goal in the first place and certainly don't think some of the shit they teach in class justifies it»
Oh, well I wasn't even trying to address whether we should be teaching kids about this sort of thing in school anyway — I think we shouldn't. I think the public schools should be where we teach math and science and literature and history and that lot, and we should leave the question of whether and when (and how) to have sex to the family and the community. Teach the details of the human reproductive system in biology class, sure. But the rest of it?....
Of course, there's the problem, then, that in some communities if the schools don't teach kids about condoms and STDs and the like, no one will. So they get flak for teaching about condoms, and they get flak for not teaching about condoms.
Kittie says...
«More education on STDs and contraceptives seem to be the smarter way to go, rather than making kids sit through a class while they roll their eyes and think about how they are gonna "do it"»
And, indeed, that's what we got when I was in school: lessons on contraceptives, STDs, and pregnancy. No one in school told us whether or not to have sex (and what my parents taught me was to wait until I was "mature" and prepared for the responsibility of having a baby).
On the other hand, the "how they are gonna 'do it'" part is an interesting thing to think about: no one ever taught us anything about how to have sex. I don't mean mechanically, I mean... the "good sex" sort of thing. One is pretty much expected to figure it out for oneself. Some figure it out well. Some don't.
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