Word: sexed
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...even if every community in America woke up tomorrow and decided to put an end to the sex-education wars--laying aside the chastity belts and condom bananas and embracing comprehensive, abstinence-first education--it's not clear that much would change. That's because for all the battles over funding and policies, no one really knows how sex education is taught inside most classrooms. While most states and local school districts have policies regarding sex education, very few set standards on how to give students factual information about sex or teach them to develop healthy relationships. Even fewer attempt...
Doing What Works There is growing evidence that comprehensive sexuality programs like the ones Jordan teaches can be more effective than abstinence-only curriculums at persuading teens to behave more responsibly. Douglas Kirby, a neutral analyst who has studied sex-education programs for more than three decades, says most evaluations of abstinence-only programs have found "no impact on sexual behavior." However, nearly half the comprehensive programs that have been studied reduced sexual risk in three areas: delaying the age at which teens first have sex, reducing the number of sexual partners they have and increasing their use of condoms...
...crucial difference between comprehensive programs that work and older curriculums that focused exclusively on promoting safe sex (remember learning how to put a condom on a banana?) is the new emphasis on behavior. "The older programs were less likely to deliver a clear message about behavior," Kirby says. "It was, 'Here are the facts, here are the pros and cons. You decide what's right for you.'" By contrast, he explains, the effective programs these days "have a very clear message that not having sex is the safest choice. They put emphasis on skill-building and role-playing, they teach...
...Taking sex education seriously isn't easy. "There are so many ways young people get messages about sex--parents, friends, media," says Sarah Brown, CEO of the National Campaign to Prevent Teen and Un ed Pregnancy. "It's hard for people to get a grip on those factors, so instead they spend their time arguing about what's on page 128." But we can't afford to keep failing our children. This month the National Center for Health Statistics reported that teen birthrates rose in 2007 for the second year, after a 15-year drop...
Having attended both single-sex and coeducational schools before coming to Harvard, I found myself disappointed by both the staff editorial and dissenting opinion on this topic...