Liberal research has just achieved an astounding breakthrough! An establishment publication has just reported that sex education, as it is typically taught in public schools all over the United States, does not have any measurable impact on teenagers’ decisions to engage in or to postpone sexual activity!
This is the conclusion of a lengthy investigative article in the prestigious Atlantic Monthly . It was written by Barbara Dafoe Whitehead, a vice president of the New York City-based Institute for American Values and author of the 1993 article entitled “Dan Quayle Was Right” (which set forth the remarkable liberal discovery of the fact that having illegitimate children is a bad idea).
Sex education started coming into public schools about 30 years ago, and became progressively more explicit until many courses include actual demonstrations of how to use contraceptives and pornographic videos to explain the facts of life to minor children.
This dramatic change in public school curriculum and practices took place without any public debate as to whether it was good or bad for children, and without any public debate as to whether or not parents approved of this change. More often, it happened without even the knowledge of the parents.
When parents discovered what was going on and protested, they were uniformly told that sex education was essential in order to combat teenage pregnancies. But there never was a shred of research to prove that sex education reduced teenage pregnancies or was beneficial to students.
The Atlantic article states that, over the last ten years, 17 states have adopted mandates to teach children in grades Kindergarten through 12th grade what is euphemistically called “comprehensive sex education.” This is based on the assumption that “once teenagers acquire a formal body of sex knowledge and skills, along with proper contraceptive technology, they will be able to govern their own sexual behavior responsibly.”
“Responsibly,” of course, means engaging in sexual activity without resulting in a live baby.
The Atlantic article asserts that comprehensive sex education “flunks the reality test.” Reality tells us that sexual activity among unmarried teenagers is far more prevalent, and at a far younger age, than before sex education came into the lives of public school children.
In 1970, five percent of 15-year-old girls and 32 percent of 17-year-old girls reported having had sex. In 1988, the figures had increased to 26 percent of 15-year olds and 51 percent of 17-year-olds.
Despite easy access to contraceptives, the percentage of births to unwed mothers continues to rise. It has already increased from 30 percent among teenagers in 1970 to nearly 70 percent in 1990. In some cities, 85 to 90 percent of all teenage births are to unwed mothers, and 25 percent of all babies born to teenagers are not their first children.
Why doesn’t handing out condoms and contraceptives solve the problem? According to Whitehead’s investigation, this just reflects “the same trend toward technocratic solutions and diminished adult responsibility.”
New Jersey was one of the first states to adopt a mandate for comprehensive sex education .and was the first state to require sex education for children in the primary grades. The state mandate was passed in the late 1970s.
The woman who helped to write and pass the state mandate, Susan Wilson, now runs a foundation-financed advocacy office which gives her a budget to crisscross the state attacking efforts to repeal the mandate. She argues that children should not be burdened with moral strictures and that sex classes should teach boys and girls from the first grade to talk casually about sex with one another without embarrassment.
Now, virtually every public school student in New Jersey receives 24 hours a year of comprehensive sex eduction. After teaching “sex literacy” in elementary schools, New Jersey middle schools plunge right into teaching about condoms, abortion, “protected sex,” and what they call “noncoital sex” (necking, petting, massage and masturbation).
New Jersey sex educators operate on the ridiculous theory that encouraging children to engage in such practices will enable them to say no to intercourse.
So, what are the results! Surprise, surprise (to the liberals, that is), by 1980, 68 percent of teenage births were to unmarried mothers; by 1991, the figure had increased to 84 percent.
Of course, responsible parents who protested New Jersey’s giant experiment on children knew that would be the result. But then, what do parents know? The professional educators were in charge.
Most surveys show that teenagers are not asking schools to teach them about sex. The girls are pleading to be told how to say no without hurting the boys’ feelings.
