NEW YORK, Dec 14 (Reuters Health) -- Most public secondary schools in the
US that teach sex education take a comprehensive approach to the topic,
including information on contraception, safe sex and abstinence, according to a
Kaiser Family Foundation report released Tuesday.
But the survey, conducted by The Alan Guttmacher Institute, also found
that one in three schools -- middle schools, junior high schools, and high
schools -- take an abstinence-only approach to sex education.
Researchers interviewed 313 school principals about the sex education
program offered in their schools. They found that 34% of schools overall adopt
an abstinence-only approach, while 42% of schools in the South and 29% of
schools elsewhere take such an approach.
"Comprehensive" means different things to different school systems, the
Kaiser Family Foundation notes. While 94% discuss abstinence in their sex
education curricula, 97% discuss HIV and 96% discuss other sexually transmitted
diseases, "fewer than half provide information about where to get and how to use
birth control (45%) and condoms (39%)."
"Among the 7 in 10 public school districts that have a district-wide
policy to teach sexuality education, the vast majority (86%) require that
abstinence be promoted, either as the preferred option for teenagers (51% have
such an abstinence-plus policy) or as the only option outside of marriage (35%
have such an abstinence-only policy)," according to a statement issued by the
Guttmacher Institute.
Asked about community support for the school's sex education program, 53%
of school superintendents said that the community was "generally silent," 41%
said the community strongly supports the program, 5% said that the community was
divided, and 1% said that sex education was generally opposed.
Tina Hoff, director of public health information and communication of The
Kaiser Family Foundation told Reuters Health that "if you are not providing
information or negative-only information, you are giving very one-sided
information."
But Hoff also noted that while sex education is a very politicized issue,
the survey results show that most principals are taking a comprehensive
approach, "with little discussion from the politicians."
A related report shows that teens are sexually active at a younger age in
the US compared with the European countries, and teen birth rates in the US are
13 times higher than those in the Netherlands, 6 times higher than the teen
birth rate in France, and nearly 4 times higher than the teen birth rate in
Germany.
Study tours sponsored by Advocates for Youth and the University of North
Carolina during the summers of 1998 and 1999 showed that the adolescent birth
rate in the US is 52 per 1,000 teens. For the Netherlands it is 4 per 1,000, for
Germany it is 14 per 1,000, and for France it is 9 per 1,000 teens.
The teen abortion rate in the US is 26.8 per 1,000, much higher that the
rate in France (8.9 per 1,000), the Netherlands (4.2 per 1,000) or Germany (3.1
per 1,000), the survey shows.
The rate of sexually transmitted diseases is also much higher in the US
than in the European countries, according to the report. The US has an AIDS case
rate of 21.7 cases per 100,000, compared with 4.8 cases per 100,000 for France,
2.2 cases per 100,000 for the Netherlands, and 1.7 cases of HIV per 100,000
teens in Germany.
James Wagoner, president of Advocates for Youth, commented that Europeans
"are very open, practical and healthy in their attitudes towards sex.... This
contrasts very dramatically with attitudes in the US."
He told Reuters Health that "ignorance is nobody's friend in the era of
AIDS. A message of abstinence is not only naive and misguided, but
irresponsible."
"Sex is not the forbidden fruit" for teens in Europe, Wagoner asserted.
"Teens are given all the information (on contraception and sexually transmitted
diseases) ...and teens in Europe begin to be sexually active later (than teens
in the US)."
"We need to do a lot more listening and a lot more understanding... we
offer simplistic solutions to (teens') complex problems." Wagoner said.
