As I’ve long suspected, condom usage is not solely about sex education. According to the Brown Daily Herald, many teens who don’t use condoms despite knowing the dangers, fail to do so because of the decreased stimulation and/or because of their partner’s expectations. It’s not for a lack of knowledge, it’s a failure to act on that knowledge. In that respect, it makes no difference what kind of sex education the kids had, whether it’s comprehensive, abstinence-only, or a blend of the two. It doesn’t matter what they tell you to do if you’re not gonna do it anyway.
What I’m far more interested in seeing is the sex education models in countries whose pregnancy and infection rates are lower than ours. Regardless of which model of sex education a person prefers, I think we can all agree that the pregnancy and infection rates are too high. With that in mind, we need to find a model that actually works, not just a model that meshes with our politics - or goes against the politics of the people on the “other” side. Cuz I swear that even if it was statistically provable that abstinence-only sex education worked, some of my friends to my left would argue against it. Likewise, if it was statistically provable that comprehensive sex education led to decreased risk among teenagers, some of my friends to my right would still disapprove. That kind of stubborn ideological loyalty is all well and good, but in situations like this, I would think that the most important thing would be doing whatever would have an impact on the numbers.
Bearing all that in mind, though, I’m not sure that what works in other countries would necessarily work here. I don’t know if it’s because the US is far more heterogeneous than most comparably-developed countries or if it there’s a cultural factor, but whatever we found would probably need some modification. Still, looking at a plan that actually seemed to work would be a good place to start.
Ultimately, what this proves is that people will make their own choices based on their own criteria, regardless of what other people tell ‘em to do. It doesn’t matter what play the coach calls if the players don’t run the play.
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I definitely agree that we should go with what works, even if it runs counter to our political ideology. Though it’s never been definitively proven that comprehensive sex ed is more effective than abstinence-only lessons, I think some of that is American educators have never truly been freed to embrace the former.
I grew up in a hom with a mother who once worked for Plannned Parenthood and, let me tell you, some of the stories my mother told me kept my young ass in line during some otherwise heated moments later in life. Those lessons weren’t 100 percent foolproof but I was somewhat ahead of the curve of my peers in high school because of the education I got in the home. It’d be nice if we could depend on parents to do their job, but hey, you’ve been a teacher. You know how it goes.
AVE TOOLEY COMMENTARY: Wrap It Up, B…
The moderate-conservative blogger writes: “What I?m far more interested in seeing is the sex education models in countries whose pregnancy and infection rates are lower than ours. Regardless of which model of sex education a person prefers, I think w…
The problem with that idea is that sex education plays such a small role. When you have inner city teenagers purposefully getting pregnant to fit in, no amount of explaining how a condom works is going to change the outcome.
The things that are driving pregnancy and infection rates are culture (it is socially acceptable to be sexually promiscuous, and it is socially acceptable to father or bear a child out of wedlock) and the disintegration of the family.
of the teenagers i know who have gotten pregnant, none of them did it on purpose. i’ve heard that claim before, but i haven’t met anybody who’s done that in real life. having sex to fit in? pretty safe bet. getting pregnant, not only on purpose, but with the intent of fitting in? that would be tough to prove.
i agree that the larger issue is probably more about, well, larger issues. that is, sex education of any kind, in and of itself has very limited power. there has to be a reason for altering or delaying sexual activity, and it has to be something better than “just because.”
Yeah, I’m going to have to co-sign here with Avery. I’ve known plenty of teenagers who’ve gotten pregnant - both during my years in school and through other work I’ve done in the community - and absolutely no one did it to fit in. I’ve always thought that was a ridiculous claim.
I’m going to argue that sex ed is probably more important than we think, but should certainly be only a supplement to a strong family unit and a personal sense that an unwanted pregnancy is going to slow your roll.
And Mike Mangum, whose culture are you referring to?
Avery:
You argue that we should “go with what works”. This is a scary concept because it does not speak to any particular set of constraints - namely RIGHTS - that any response should be taken in the context of.
Certainly castration would “work” to both reduce pregnancy and the drive in the male libido. Mostly surely, however, you would believe that this is a violation of all types of individual rights against such government enforcement.
Secondly - do you respect the RIGHT of a practicing Catholic family to have the use of contraception being against their religious doctrine? If so why is it that the school is a place to indoctrinate children about the “norm” of using condoms and other birth control rather than empowering the PARENTS and or the community - those who choose to - to drive this message home with a less compulsory force to it?
(Not that I support its exclusive use but) When I listen to the anti-Abstinence Only activists rail against A.A. by pointing out increases in teen pregnancy and STDs but failing to make note of the comprehensiveness at which this policy is practices it is clear that they are placing their ideology over their real concerns about addressing the problem. On a recent NPR interview, for example, an Atlanta based teen activist who was anti-AA pointed and was being interviewed about the increase in STDs among minority children blurted out during her first opportunity to speak that it was Abstinence Only education that was to blame for denying young people the education and access to birth control that was at the root of the problem. Now she failed to mention that if there is any school system that goes against the “conservative” policies of AA - it would definitely be those “progressive” school system which Black folks attend. This activist made no such attempt at contextualizing this.
Next we go to the recent CNN “Being Black In America” series where Dr. Juliane Malveaux detailed the problem with HIV infections as being a problem of NOT ENOUGH marketing of “Wrap It Up”. What I found interesting is that she would not even entertain the question “Does Wrap It Up work in the first place?”. To her it was the conservatives who had thus far suppressed the entire marketing message and thus any billboards and ads plastered in Vibe and XXL were those that snuck by. The amazing part about the ability by certain progressives to define the narrative is that in their version THEY are always the “heroes” who would be successful……but for the molestation of the conservative.
In my view everyone starts out AIDS free and “un-pregnant”. Where as some people compare the differences in the rates of occurrence of both among populations in the USA and see the higher numbers in Blacks as proof of racism, discrimination, unequal access to health care and information - FEW OF THEM will also dare to make note that at least some significant portion of these ills that are shown is a function of the prevailing order that is cast upon our community by those like Julian Mavleaux (I have a long, long list of others, but I’ll spare you) who seek to protect the status quo WITHIN THE BLACK COMMUNITY, protecting it from due criticism as they seek to shift all of the blame to outside forces, some of who’s influence over us is only third party and tangential.
well, the last paragraph is actually the reason i’m interested in the comparison with similarly-developed nations. statistically speaking, american teens aren’t having more sex, they’re just having more consequences. that’s why i’m wondering about the cultural aspect. i think it’s entirely responsible to argue for delayed onset of sexual activity, but as other countries demonstrate, you can’t conflate more sex for more dangerous sex. maybe i should’ve explained that element of the ‘other countries’ variable more explicitly.
but see here’s my deal: nobody says that a person has to take a condom. using your example, if a person is against using a condom because of their religious upbringing, he’s probably not gonna be gettin some either. or to put it another way, if he’s gonna break with his religious beliefs by gettin some, he might as well take precautions to make sure he doesn’t get the part he didn’t count on.
to use a metaphor i’ve used before, i used to coach wrestling. as a coach, i never wanted my kids to get pinned. i never even wanted them to get on their backs in the first place. i hated it, and i tried every way i could think of to get them to wrestle in a way that they wouldn’t expose their backs to the mat. BUT, and this is a sofa, it woulda been supremely irresponsible and downright foolish of me to expect that they would NEVER go to their back. knowing that, it was my job to teach them how to get off their back, and how to fight through moves that, with any good sense, they would never have gotten into in the first place. having them do drills to get off their back wasn’t a capitulation that i expected them to get pinned. on the contrary, it was a recognition that even if they got into a bad situation, i still expected them to fight their way through. same thing here. providing contraception doesn’t have to be a counter to an abstinence-based, comprehensive education program. the whole education is the ‘what we’d like you to do.’ the contraception is ‘if you do somethin other than what we’ve taught you, at least be safe.’
[quote]i’m interested in the comparison with similarly-developed nations. [/quote]
Avery - most detailed and documented “Best Practices” about how a group of people can reduce the onset of teen pregnancy and HIV still requires several key forces working in its favor that is not always assured even among the most problem plagued people:
* The ACCEPTANCE that what they have is a problem and it is harming their people from obtaining their full potential
* The ACCEPTANCE that they must define THEIR OWN standard on the issue
(And thus the fact that some of their self-appointed spokespeople/operatives can lurch out into the population of their “long time adversaries” and find that they too have some of their people “in the mud with us” and thus that they should “mind their own business” on the issue)
* The ACCEPTANCE that this problem is solvable upon our own backs if the collective enforces these best practices upon its own in the pretext of achieving these more favorable outcomes (and the corollary which says that in outsourcing the problem to the government - the people lose the cultural confidence to engage their own at the community level and have them to see their individual contribution to the common end goal)
and most importantly
* The WILLINGNESS to do all that is necessary to obtain this more positive end as they are going to be the main consumers basking in the fruits of benefit once this is expressed - thus WHO ELSE might they expect to do this for THEIR benefit?
i think i’d be splitting hairs if i pointed back to the international question, because overall, i think we have a similar opinion on the matter. but suffice it to say that i’m questioning whether stigmatizing the behavior is, in and of itself, helpful. while the societal implications of sexual behaviors among teenagers are readily evident, i’m thinking that the most problematic aspect of that behavior is with the outcomes, not necessarily the behavior itself. so if teens were out there screwin like carpenters but the pregnancy/disease rate was low, it might not be as big a deal. not sociologically, at least. (depending on a person’s spiritual persuasion, there still might be cause for concern, but that’s a different question with a different answer. ) that’s really where the question is coming from. if i go overseas, there’s not the same taboo on seeing the human body; it’s not a big deal to watch tv or read a magazine and see a woman with her breasts out. over here, it’s a scandal. yet our performance on indices of sexual health are lower than those in countries with “looser” public standards. THAT’S really what i’m looking at.
but i agree that your last point is the most important. but i think that’s the limitation of most education programs in the first place: my definition of comprehensive is different than most. it’s not just about understanding the plumbing, and it’s not just a question of whether a person should or should not do it. should or shouldn’t depends very much on a ‘why.’ if there’s no valid reason to buy in, no tangible benefit for the action (or the lack thereof), then why do it — or not do it, as the case may be? that’s where the sales pitch has to be stronger. we can say what to do all day, but convincing somebody of why is the question.
and in all that, people who are smart enough to know better are gonna get caught out there because they think it can’t or won’t happen to them.
[quote]i’m questioning whether stigmatizing the behavior is, in and of itself, helpful.[/quote]
If I said:
“Do not take another step forward or you are going to fall to your death over the cliff”
OR
“Do not take another step forward or you are going to fall to your death over the cliff - YOU IDIOT”
It is up to the receiver of the warning to:
1) Separate the sage and relevant warning from the offense
2) See if the warning is valid
3) Determine if the consequences of ignoring the warning, because his “feelings are hurt” is worth it in the end
One of the critical flaws in the present prevailing influence within the Black community is that the operatives who have the most touch points in the media, the microphone and the ink pen focus more on the MESSENGER than the MESSAGE. In addition they work to counter the popular adversary more than they can sell the notion that THE POPULAR PLAN is actually WORKING and thus should be followed.
Sadly and unfortunately some of the places around the nation that have a red push pin on the map of the CDC indicating the presence of certain epidemics also happen to be governed and popularly influenced by the popular mores of the Black political leadership. (Baltimore is the #1 growth city for HIV infections, for example)
Specifically with regard to stigmatization of teen pregnancy, for example, some of the same people who work to de-stigmatize the practice are among the same people demanding that this burden be diluted among the national population as a sign that THEY value the life of this child. The challenge, however, is to have the two people engaging in the act that they were clearly not prepared for to have more valuation in the health and welfare of THEIR perspective child by factoring in the possible outcomes of their actions. The sex act has residuals that extend far beyond the stimulated nerve endings that they both receive.
In the grand scheme of things, however, by lengthening the “social contract” that some advocate for we are said to have societal advancement as more people have their actions abstracted from the normal consequences there in. This might prove to be an enabler. What does a person who practiced temperance benefit?
What does a person who practiced temperance benefit? depends on what they wanted in the first place.
another old quote: my mama always told me if you need 5 cents, don’t ask for 3, ask for 10. in this case, we can debate what the 5 cents is, but let’s say that the 3 cents is whatever ostensible benefits there are to early promiscuity. the question is, how do you get people to wait for the ten cents instead of taking the three cents that are right there. if somebody doesn’t believe that the nickel is really there, let alone the dime, then it’s much more difficult to get them to pass up on the three cents.
now bear in mind, this approach is irrespective of the methodology or source of the instruction. sex instruction in church isn’t abstinence-only, it’s 3-5-10. it’s saying that taking the 3 cents of non-maritial orgasm interrupts your 10 cent relationship with God.
see, i think the limitation of the broken bridge model is that almost nobody wants to fall into a ravine. sex, on the other hand, is something that almost everybody wants. pregnancy and disease are not unavoidable consequences of promiscuous behavior. they’re possible consequences, but there’s not the same 1:1 correlation of consequence that there is in the case of a broken bridge.