re sex education in article apr athos rutgers edu jviv usmi midland chevron com john viveiros writes it seems i spend a significant amount of my time correcting errors about the reliability tests for condoms and abstinence a few years ago i saw that famous study that showed a failure rate for condoms the same study showed a failure rate for abstinence that is adult couples who relied on abstinence to prevent pregnancy got pregnant in alarming numbers they didn t have the willpower to abstain and we re thinking that this will work with high school kids i am told that planned parenthood siecus style values free methods that teach contraceptive technology and advise kids how to make choices actually increase pregnancy rates i posted a long article on this a while back and will be happy to email a copy to any who are interested the article included sources to contact for information on research verifying these statements and an outstanding source for info on acquiring abstinence related curricula even in single copy quantities for home use the same research produced the results that abstinence related curricula were found to decrease pregnancy rates in teens i assume that it is reasonable to assume that the aids rate will fluctuate with the pregnancy rate the difference is not in contraceptive technology but in the values taught to the children the pp siecus curricula taught the kids that they have legitimate choices while the abstinence related curricula taught them that they did not have legitimate choices other than abstinence it is the values system that is the strongest determinent of the behavior behavior of these kids despite the better track record of abstinence related curricula they are suppressed in favor of curricula that produce an effect contrary to that desired question for further discussion as they say in the textbooks why don t we teach safe drug use to kids instead of drug abstinence isn t it because we know that a class in how to use drugs safely if you choose to use drugs would increase drug use why isn t drug abstinence education barred from schools because it teaches religion aren t we abandoning those children who will use drugs anyway and need instruction in their safe use joe kellett jkellett netcom com
