Abstinence-only sex-education is illegal in CA schools – a mandate requires that if a school teaches sex education, there must be comprehensive education about AIDS prevention including safer sex practices. Where a school can choose not to provide sex ed, they cannot provide abstinence only sex ed.
But the CA mandate has no guidelines about how the information should be –disseminated - to students. A teacher or sex-ed program could provide the information in a variety of ways: through textbooks, handouts, lectures, films or any other method. This is why abstinence-only text books have been allowed into California’s high schools.
“I can’t believe it,” said Nancy Resnick of Moraga, CA about her daughter, Elizabeth Hassler’s human sexuality text book. The book, written by Brigham Young Scholars is a mainstream textbook distributed through Glencoe McGraw Hill. But despite being a hefty, 10 pound text, the sex-ed book fails to use the work “condom” even once – not even in the glossary. Upon a close investigation of the index, a reference to “birth control” is found. The term appears in the pre-natal section, where the book boldly states that use of birth control pills “can lead to birth defects.”
The district’s use of this book leaves it to teachers to provide medically accurate and complete information and to inform students about safer sex. In fact, California law requires that teachers provide such comprehensive sex ed. But in lieu of having a monitor in every sex-ed classroom across the state, and because the textbooks provided are terribly incomplete teachers and principles are left to ensure the law is upheld – and apparently some choose to ignore it.
Elizabeth and other students at Campolindo high School in Moraga have said that one teacher in particular failed to deliver information about safer sex.
“It’s weird because we learned about condoms in 6th grade,” said Elizabeth, then a freshman at Campolindo. Part of the success of California’s previous sex ed policies can be seen in the decline of teen pregnancies over the past decade. But despite this drop, teens still have sex. The average age for loss of virginity is 17, well before high school graduation. The definition of “virginity” to most students often does not include other sexual activities that students engage in, many of which could lead to STD contraction.
“It’s about how we have sex,” said young Oakland man, referring to the lack of knowledge in young people about what constitutes risky sexual activity.. “I remember saying ‘I should put something on if we’re going to keep doing this,’ and she said ‘no, no, we’re not having sex..’”
When teens have incomplete ideas of what constitutes sex, and even teens informed about safer sex don’t feel the need to use protection when engaging in anything except sex-is-when-the-penis-enters-the-vagina sexual activity, why are we adding more confusion by teaching abstinence as a method of disease control? Will students now think that abstaining from the one act, but possibly engaging in others, will protect them from sexually transmitted infections?
Whatever the reality of teen sexuality may be, Glencoe McGraw Hill seems to be far more interested in the political satisfaction of adults than in equipping today’s youth with the information they need to protect themselves from miserable diseases like AIDS.
California is not the only state where the company’s abstinence-only books have popped up, despite state laws against abstinence-only curriculum. The same books have sparked some controversy in New York State. As long as these text books are allowed, teens are at high risk of not getting the adequate safer sex information that they desperately need. A slippery slope indeed.
