Abstinence based sex-ed program nets Texas school a chlamydia outbreak

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“If kids are not having any sexual activity, they can’t get this disease … That’s not a bad program,”

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1/15 != 15%

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Thanks. Corrected.

I imagine 1/15 would be an underestimate. How many of these kids are actually getting tested?
I’ve worked in a few public health positions and on more than one occasion I’ve heard of schools being pulled aside and it shown the significantly higher rates of STI and pregnancy in these ‘prestigious religious schools’ when compared with the local state-school where the socially disadvantaged go. They USUALLY eventually get the hint. It’s why it’s so good to collect the data. It’s very disappointing to see this school’s response to these revelations.

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I wonder if they’ll up the ante?

“Those kids should be getting STIs/pregnant as punishment for having sex.”

It’s been a while since I’ve heard it phrased as boldly as that, but the sentiment is still alive and well.

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And if your sex education program pretends that teenagers don’t have the hormones that they haven’t learned to cope with because your sex education program pretends that teenagers don’t have hormones and should just say no to sexual urges the same way everyone should just say no to drugs, they’re going to get their sex education from TV and movies and the internet and all those mediums have more interesting takes on the subject than your sex education curriculum ever will.

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So, the headline says:

Abstinence based sex-ed program…

whereas the article says:

The high school has three days of sex education in the fall semester for students, with the curriculum including abstinence.

Which is not the same thing.

There is some sloppy journalism going on, either here or in the linked paper.

The superintendent said “abstinence [is] a useful methodology for keeping kids away from sexual activity”, which it is not. “If kids are not having any sexual activity, they can’t get this disease" is true, but irrelevant, because point #1.

“Abstinence-based” and “Mentions abstinence” are not the same thing, but that doesn’t matter in the slightest. The superintendent, who is in charge of recommending and implementing changes to an ineffective program, defends the ineffective part of the program, using faulty logic to explain why the ineffective portion should be effective.

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Maybe I’m old fashioned (N.B.: I’m old fashioned) and I’m perfectly fine with a sex education program that is prefaced says, “waiting to have sex until you’re older is a perfectly sound idea because intimacy can overwhelm your emotions at your age. Now, since many of you won’t listen to that advice, let’s get down to particulars…”

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Well what else do you expect? He can’t say condom - that’s a dirty word!

Another old-fashioned parent who has said the same thing to my kids. “Hooking up” isn’t entirely about hormones…a large part of it is fitting into social expectations, which is NOT an appropriate reason to choose to have sex. I have used the phrase “quality over quantity” with my kids in many subjects, so they aren’t surprised when I talk about sex in the same way.

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The school district announced today that the football team will henceforth be named the Crane Koalas.

And if contrafactual hypotheticals were worth a damn the entire universe would be unrecognizably different and economics would be a science…

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