| Windsor Tribune - Windsor, Colorado |
| The Family Room: Abstinence only can't replace
sex ed |
| By REBECCA VALENTINE |
| Posted on Friday, October 28 @ 14:44:00 PDT |
|
| Windsor Middle School is considering replacing
its current sex education program with WAIT Training, an abstinence-only
curriculum. WAIT stands for Why Am I Tempted, and it promotes
itself as a love/relationship education. It explicitly states
it is not sex ed, and that's no lie. |
|
| WAIT doesn't accurately or wholly
educate students on transmission of HIV/AIDS or prevention of
sexually transmitted diseases (STDs). Instead, the program dogmatically
presents abstinence until marriage as a cure-all, the sole prescription
for everything regarding sex and relationships. |
|
| I've read the workshop manual from
cover to cover. Most parents will not have that opportunity.
Instead, they will be given the chance to attend three informational
presentations by WAIT staff. These presentations will probably
be engaging and lively. But what they won't tell parents about
the program is, I believe, more important than what they will.
|
|
| Unless you've read the manual, you
won't know that our female students will be told that "provocative
dress is disrespectful to the man you're with." Hello??! What
ever happened to telling our girls that provocative dress makes
them look cheap, that it is an advertisement of their low self-respect,
whether they're with a guy or not? |
|
| Unless you've read the manual, you
won't realize that the sources from which the staff pull their
information are outdated, despite the manual being a revised
edition. Most of it comes from the late 1980s through the mid-1990s.
I found a source citation dating back to 1969. In addition,
the program is rife with generalizations that lack scientific
backing. For example, one handout tells students that "Married
people have the best and most sex." It also tells them that
married men have a lower incidence of mental disorders. It neglects
to report that married women have higher incidence of emotional
disorders because marriage is more demanding of women than men
(a statistic I found from 2005). |
|
| The findings of a 2005 study were
reported in the journal "Sexually Transmitted Infections." That
study indicates that married women are "much more likely" than
single women to have sexual difficulties. But our girls won't
hear that, either. Also, the manual fails to tell students who
these married people are being compared to. Single men? Singles
in general? Giraffes? |
|
| It's disconcerting that adults are
giving our children questionable information ("Married people
appear to have a calming influence in their lives"). It's downright
dangerous when they give our students misinformation. For example,
students are asked to analyze risk factors for HIV/AIDS transmission:
No risk, At risk, High risk. They are told that the sweat, tears,
saliva, of an infected person can put them at risk for transmission.
But NIAID, a department of the National Institutes of Health,
publishes a fact sheet that explicitly states that there is
no scientific evidence that the virus can be spread through
saliva, sweat or tears. |
|
| The "fact" sheets on STDs are equally
misleading. Students are told, verbatim, the same thing on each
one: The only way to prevent catching this disease is to abstain
from sex until marriage. |
|
| Students will be given a handout that
includes important topics to be discussed with potential spouses.
On that list they'll find religion, childrearing philosophies,
and the most important topic of them all: what temperature to
keep the house throughout the day and during the night. Girls
will be provided with a "Wedding of My Dreams" handout that
has them complete sentences like "My guests will eat (blank),"
"My bridesmaids will wear (blank)," and "We will honeymoon in
(blank)." I don't want my middle school student to be thinking
of marriage. At that age, these kids have enough on their plate.
|
|
| Which brings me to my last gripe against
WAIT. It imposes a specific set of values on a general population.
Not everyone plans or hopes to marry. And what about our homosexual
students? WAIT completely ignores them, sending the not-so-subtle
message that they are not important or valued as individuals.
If for no other reason, WAIT should not replace sex ed because
it further ostracizes an already-marginalized population of
our kids. Ironically, the majority of people who promote abstinence-until-marriage
are the same people who refuse gays the legal right to marry.
Sorry, gay folks. No sex for you. Ever. |
|
| Currently, eighth graders are offered
a healthy sexuality class that is abstinence-based but which
also provides valuable information should students choose another
option. And since the government tells us that 46.7 percent
of our high school kids have engaged in sex, it would be irresponsible
of us to withhold that information from our children. |
|
| Historically, abstinence-only education
has failed our kids. And time is not a luxury we can afford
where their health and well-being are concerned. Do you want
to wait to see if this WAIT program works, while in the meantime
your child could be having unprotected sex? I don't. |
|
| Censoring valuable information such
as how to have protected sex should our kids choose to engage
will not cement a commitment to abstinence. It will only give
them an excuse to make stupid, possibly life-threatening choices
as they exercise their independence. |
|
| These students are humans with free
will. Let's treat them as such. |
|
| Rebecca Valentine survives in Windsor.
She is the property of four kids and an angel. |
