Relay-Version: version B 2.10 5/3/83; site utzoo.UUCP Path: utzoo!linus!decvax!ittvax!wex From: wex@ittvax.UUCP (Alan Wexelblat) Newsgroups: net.politics Subject: Re: Birth control and education Message-ID: <889@ittvax.UUCP> Date: Thu, 28-Jul-83 09:45:10 EDT Article-I.D.: ittvax.889 Posted: Thu Jul 28 09:45:10 1983 Date-Received: Thu, 28-Jul-83 22:08:29 EDT References: <885@ittvax.UUCP> umcp-cs.1180 Lines: 25 One extremely important "guideline" that might be provided is for people like Liz Allen (who have worked in pregnancy/counseling situations) to go into the schools where sex ed is being taught, and speak to the teens. Many schools have trouble finding competent people to teach sex ed, and might be grateful for the benefit of experience. The problem is NOT (I believe) with the fact of the teaching, but rather with what is taught. My own sex ed was kind of odd, mostly due to where I grew up. I started out in a lower-middle class school system. The high school was literally across the street from an army base, and had ~35% transient students, and ~55% minority. In that high school they had been losing an average of four girls per grade per year (16 girls/year) in a school of about 1200 kids. In response, a program of early sex ed was started. And I mean early: in seventh grade we were told exactly what was what. No punches pulled; no joking. We saw a film of a live birth of a human baby, and we listened to one of the town cops (who did volunteer work in a clinic nearby) telling about what he had seen. The parents (by and large) gave the progam tacit support, and waited. By the time I reached the high school (three years after the program started), the pregnancy rate was down to one-fourth what it had been. Ever since then, I have been convinced that if you tell kids the truth early enough, it will help. Other opinions? --Alan Wexelblat (#32 - and I'm not even trying!) decvax!ittvax!wex