Sex education

About

Sex education is education about the facts of human sexual reproduction, especially at the grade-school level (adolescents and almost-adolescents).

Contraceptives

Contraception is a major area of sex education because it allows those who are sexually active to:

• reduce the risk of unwanted pregnancy
• reduce the spread of sexually-transmitted diseases (STDs), especially among teenagers

United States

Sex education is considered controversial in the United States, where it is often strongly opposed by conservatives and the religious right (see, for example, Conservapedia) on the following grounds:

• teaching kids about sex will increase their interest in it
• it is better to teach kids to abstain from sex (abstinence-based education) than to teach them more about it

This has given rise to two major forms of sex education in the US, "abstinence-based" (which emphasizes abstinence as the best prevention) and "comprehensive" (which teaches proper use of contraceptives and includes bioscience).

Since 1982, the US has spent over $1.5 billion on ABE. The Bush II administration widely promoted ABE and laws to encourage abstinence-based over comprehensive.

See also: Wikipedia, Guttmacher 2006-12

Conclusions

There is no evidence that abstinence-based education is effective, and considerable evidence that it is ineffective -- especially when it displaces comprehensive sex education.

Evidence regarding the effectiveness of comprehensive sex education versus no sex education at all is less easy to come by, and Issuepedia is still collecting data.

Links

Reference

• Wikipedia
• Conservapedia
• dKosopedia: no equivalent article (as of 2008-08-26)
• SourceWatch: no equivalent article (as of 2008-08-26)

Filed Links

version 2

• 2010-05-29 [Talk|Index] Drop in rates of teen pregnancy is a good sign for the future § “according to a new study from the Sex Information and Education Council of Canada ... teen pregnancies decreased by nearly 37 per cent nationally and 35 per cent in British Columbia in the 10-year period between 1996 and 2006.”
• 2010-03-03 [Talk|Index] More sex education means more teenage pregnancies...always § “Sex education has failed. So the Establishment decrees that we must have more of it, and in fact that there shall be no escape from it.”
• 2008-08-07 [Talk|Index] When It Comes To Abstinence Teens and Adults Aren't Speaking The Same Language § “Abstinence can mean different things to adolescents than to adults. That's one reason why abstinence-only programs do not have strong effects in preventing teenage sexual activity, according to new University of Washington research.”
• 2008-03-28 [Talk|Index] Sex Ed Can Help Prevent Teen Pregnancy § “Comprehensive sex education may help reduce teen pregnancies without increasing levels of sexual intercourse or sexually transmitted diseases.”
• 2008-03-20 [Talk|Index] Comprehensive Sex Education Might Reduce Teen Pregnancies, Study Suggests § “New research suggests that comprehensive sex education might lead to less teen pregnancy, and there are no indications that it boosts the levels of sexual intercourse or sexually transmitted diseases.”
• 2007-11-05 [Talk|Index] Emerging Answers 2007 § Research Findings on Programs to Reduce Teen Pregnancy and Sexually Transmitted Diseases
• 2007-04 [Talk|Index] Impacts of Four Title V, Section 510 Abstinence Education Programs § “Based on follow-up data collected from youth four to six years after study enrollment, the report presents the estimated program impacts on youth behavior, including sexual abstinence, risks of pregnancy and sexually transmitted diseases (STDs), and other related outcomes.”
• 2007-04-13 [Talk|Index] Citing New Study Showing that Federally Funded Abstinence-Only-Until-Marriage Programs Don’t Work, ACLU Calls on Congress to Stop Funding § “Findings indicate that youth in the program group were no more likely than control group youth to have abstained from sex and, among those who reported having had sex, they had similar numbers of sexual partners and had initiated sex at the same mean age.”
• 2002 [Talk|Index] Interventions to reduce unintended pregnancies among adolescents: systematic review of randomised controlled trials § “Conclusions: Primary prevention strategies evaluated to date do not delay the initiation of sexual intercourse, improve use of birth control among young men and women, or reduce the number of pregnancies in young women.”

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