Speaking of Sex

Given the country’s obsession with “outcome-based” education, parents may wonder why their tax dollars are still being spent supporting a curriculum that hasn’t worked. Or why an approach to sex ed is being pushed in Washington that’s not what an overwhelming majority of Minnesota parents recently surveyed said they want for their kids.

Last spring, a survey of 1,605 parents across the state found unanimous support for this statement: “All health information provided in sex ed classes should be medically accurate.” “It’s unusual to get 100 percent agreement on anything with parents,” says Michael Resnick, a professor of pediatrics at the University of Minnesota and director of the Healthy Youth Development Prevention Research Center, which conducted the survey. But despite parents’ wish for medically accurate sex ed, it has not been a hallmark of some abstinence-only courses. A 2004 congressional analysis found that teens in some abstinence-only programs had been taught that abortion leads to sterility and suicide, that touching a person’s genitals can “result in pregnancy,” and that HIV, the virus that causes AIDS, can be spread via sweat and tears. None of those statements is true.

Not only do Minnesota parents expect the information to be correct, the U of M survey found a striking consensus about what exactly we want taught in sex ed to our children. For instance, 93 percent of the survey’s respondents said their kids should learn that the “best choice” for sexual intercourse is in the context of a loving, committed relationship such as marriage; 93 percent said their kids should learn how to talk about sex—including how to say “no”—with a partner; and 89 percent said they wanted comprehensive programs that encouraged abstinence while providing information on preventing pregnancy and disease.

Combining Plan A (abstinence) with Plan B (how to protect yourself if you do have sex) has often been attacked by abstinence-only supporters as a mixed message that encourages teens to have sex. But, as Resnick notes, the “current state of scientific evidence tells us that accurate, developmentally appropriate, comprehensive sex education can lead to having  first sex at a later age and improved condom and contraception use” among those who do have sex, thus reducing the risk of pregnancy and sexually transmitted diseases. While parents may not be as familiar with such research, 81 percent of those queried in the U of M poll rejected the notion that “Comprehensive sex ed classes cause students to have more sex.” “Most parents are practical, and they see the risks their kids face every day, and they read the headlines,” says Brigid Riley, executive director of the Minnesota Organization on Adolescent Pregnancy, Prevention and Parenting.

Lately, the headlines haven’t been good. Reported cases of sexually transmitted diseases reached a new high in Minnesota last year, with teens and young adults accounting for 70 percent of the state’s chlamydia cases. The abortion rate among minors in Minnesota went up by 16 percent between 2005 and 2006. A nationwide drop in the teen sex rate has stalled since 2001, and while overall trends among teens suggest that many are postponing sex, 95 percent of Americans will have sex before they’re married—two-thirds by the time they graduate from high school.

The U of M study mirrors the findings of a MOAPPP survey conducted in 2000 and many other studies across the nation. And yet a bill that would require the comprehensive sex ed that parents say they want—and which would include an opt-out provision for parents who don’t want their kids enrolled—has failed in the state legislature for the past eight years, often with the explanation that parents don’t want it or that it would never fly in the more conservative legislative districts. But which districts are they? Is there a place on the legislative map of Minnesota where there isn’t a solid majority of parents who want this kind of education for their kids?

“Actually, there isn’t one,” Resnick says. “Not one.”