Six years, thousands of US lives, and half a trillion dollars and one rolling foreign policy catastrophe later, and we're pretty much back where we were on September 12, 2001. So says the NIE. What does work? Well, who knows, but it's going to have to involve Our Friend Perv.
Similarly, after tens of thousands of dollars in government grants, teen sex abstinence programs don't seem to work. What does work, it appears, is not conventional sex ed programs, but rather some combination of effective parental guidance and a healthy peer culture.
In both cases, it looks like our government's going to keep on doing what it wants to do, even though it doesn't work.
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SiliconValleySteve: "I'll tell you what, my Kindergarteners didn't need any sex education and I'm just arrogant enough to believe that it is none of his business to meddle in personal family business like that."
You're also arrogant enough to presume what he thought would be appropriate. Things like how boys and girls are different and what is or isn't appropriate behavior might be reasonable to teach. It might also include instructions like "don't let strangers try to touch you" and what to do if something like that happens.
"Amazingly we survived without sex ed for much of our existence."
For at least some of our existence sex ed came by demonstration.
Puritans openly discussed it at length and in detail. Children shared the bedroom room with parents and it was not considered harmful for the children to be aware of parental sexual relations.
Today having sexual relations in front of the children might be viewed as a form of abuse. We think of the Puritans as such, well, puritans. On sexual issues they were definitely not.
But the government was definitely not involved. Perhaps a return to tradition is in order? ;^)
"Of course, the right could have avoided this by not running roughshod over the left for the last 6 years, but they didn't. Don't expect the left to take the high road and give the right any due when (not if) it's their turn at the reins."
So your solution is to put a bunch of pedophiles in charge of sex education for five year olds. Screw you.
So your solution is to put a bunch of pedophiles in charge of sex education for five year olds. Screw you.
???
He said the left, how that equates to pedophilia is beyond me.
Don, that was unworthy of you.
In general, spin rules the day. In a 2002 CDC report, the general trend was a combination of declining rates of sex at young ages and increased use of contraceptives from the very first sexual encounter.
Abstinence-only fanatics need to get a grip; early introduction of contraceptive use has not proven to be causally related to an increse in promiscuity, and can be linked to a decrease in STDs and teen pregnancy.
Abstinence education advocates, especially those who took a cooperative approach, should be praised publicly and loudly. As for those who continue to think scare tactics work, do us a favor and provide proof of widespread evidence of cavalier approaches to sex ed, like the oft cited condom demonstrations to pre-teens (with the obligatory hero/ine being ridiculed by hir peers for not participating). Anything can happen in isolation, and often does; using isolated events to paint all such situations is outright lying.
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