60 Minutes ran a report 2 weeks ago on the shift in sex-education in America.
http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2005/05/20/60minutes/main696975.shtmlThe story focused on a government-sponsored program entitled "Silver Ring Thing" (
http://www.silverringthing.com)
which is one example of a program the Bush administration is spending a total of $167 million on this year to promote its abstinence-only approach to sex education.
The goal of Silver Ring Thing is to get teenagers to pledge they will not have sex until they get married. But there are problems...
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Excerpts:
"And there’s a law that says that for a program like Silver Ring Thing to receive government funding, it must not talk about the health benefits of using condoms -- only about how they fail."
"Pledging will help them delay sex for, say, 18 months — a year and a half," says Bearman. "It\'s a big deal in the lives of teenagers. Eighteen months is a phenomenally long time. It’s almost two school years."
So what\'s the downside?
"The downside is that, when they have sex, pledgers are one-third less likely to use condoms at first sex," says Bearman. "So all of the benefit of the delay in terms of pregnancy-risk and in terms of STD acquisition -- poof -- it just disappears because they’re so much less likely to use a condom at first sex."
The U.S. Supreme Court has said that faith-based organizations may not use tax dollars to support “inherently religious” activities. So how is Silver Ring Thing permitted to spread the gospel of Christ and still get federal funds?
The White House’s position is that faith-based organizations like Silver Ring Thing can do it as long as they give their listeners an option to hear a non-religious message in a different location – which Pattyn does.
Based on those interviews with more than 20,000 young people who took virginity pledges, Bearman found that 88 percent of them broke their pledge and had sex before marriage.
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I have been disturbed by this report ever since I watched it last week and was wondering what you guys thought about the state of sex education in America? Should the government be intervening and promoting this faith-based turn? What was your experience with sex education and whose role do you think it should it be to educate a seemingly younger and younger sexually active teenage demographic on the issues of sex?
