Stephen Smith's article "No to sex" regarding sex education in school systems, explores the pros and cons of teaching abstinence. The article begins with a quote from a girl who attends Worcester Academy in Massachusetts "When you preach abstinence, you sound like a parent...I feel like my mom's talking to me when adults come to me and say, 'abstinence is the only way. You shouldn't have sex.' That's so unrealistic...people are going to do it." But the article then transfers into a dicussion of whether or not abstinence is potentinally the best way to teach students about keeping safe.
A study by University of Pennsylvania appeared in the Archives of Pediatrics & Adolescent Medicine. This study showed that sixth and seventh graders (in Philadelphia) were less likely to become sexually active if they took abstinence-only classes as opposed to classes that emphasized condom-use and/or condom-use and abstinence. The article then goes into a brief history of teen pregnancy rates, the age of AIDS, the Clinton and Bush administrations that both "championed abstinence until marriage." "No to sex" then transitions into a conversation about John and Loretta Jemmott who conducted a study with 662 African-American adolescents, averaged at age twelve. The students were assigned to four different kinds of sex education classes as well as a fifth class that "addressed health issues more broadly and did not specifically cover sex education." Thirty-three percent of those who were in the abstinence-only class reported having become sexually active in the two years following the classes compared to the 42% and 52% in two of the other classes that advocated safe sex.
Please use the following link to find the full article from the Boston Globe. http://www.boston.com/news/health/articles/2010/02/15/study_suggests_abstinence_education_works_for_teens_but_the_debate_still_rages/
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