Real danger of sex education

THE EDITOR: Many people have been stating their concern regarding our youth being sexually active and the danger of HIV/AIDS. 

They are saying that sex education should be taught in our schools and that teenagers should be instructed about “safe sex” and condom use.  Some of them are upset with the mere idea that our young people should, instead, be taught that abstinence is the only viable approach. We really should consider the following: Over the course of the nineties, USAID shipped approximately five billion (yes, billion  not million!) condoms to countries outside of the US. Even more were shipped by the UN Population Fund, the UK’s Overseas Development Agency and other providers. Yet, despite this flood of condoms into the developing world, the rate of HIV/AIDS infection continued to grow at horrifying rates. The number of victims increased from just over 40 thousand in 1990 to over 40 million in 2000.

 While condom use may (when properly and consistently used) provide up to an 85 percent reduction in HIV/AIDS transmission risk, the presumed protection of using a condom may also lead individuals to engage in recklessly promiscuous behaviour, just because they feel “safe,” leading to, instead, an increase in risk of infection.  Others would have us believe that young people must be instructed in a sex education that does not spare anyone’s sensibilities about explicit sex information, as well as education on the various types of contraception. They claim that the only way to protect our youth is to ensure that they know everything there is to know about sex and contraceptives. However, the things that have followed the introduction of sex education in schools should dismay and appall any thoughtful person.  Sweden was a pioneer in this field. 

The sex education programmes were followed by what was termed “sexual hysteria,” with a catastrophic increase in venereal disease, a great increase in promiscuity and an increase in the number of teenage pregnancies,  the very things it was thought the programmes would halt!  Precisely the same pattern has been observed in the United States in areas where sex education has been introduced in schools. The reason for this is very easy to see. When students learn, for example, arithmetic, it is taken for granted that they can put what they learn into practice and can do simple things such as handle a small allowance, or go to the store and bring back the correct change. It must appear to the students, when they are given detailed and exact information about sex, that they are regarded as ready to make use of this information. Add to this fact that the teaching is, by its very nature, emotionally stirring and provocative, and you have an explosive situation.

Research by a consortium of 13 US state Physician Resource Coun-cils, representing thousands of practising physicians, supports conclusions that the decline in the US during the 1990s of adolescent pregnancy, birth and abortion rates was due largely to abstinence education. What our adolescents need is not education on the details of sex and contraception (promiscuity education), but a programme that puts emphasis on the teenager’s sense of self-determination and control with respect to sexual behaviour. We need to enable them to progressively develop responsible behaviour, positive self-esteem and respect for others. The overall objective of such a programme would be to enable adolescents to realise that true sexual freedom is the freedom to say “no” to sex outside of marriage,  in other words — abstinence. To those who would claim that such a programme would be repressive, I answer that many psychologists and psychiatrists have spoken out vigorously against sex education in schools, declaring that sex instruction of children in the classroom or in groups is dehumanising and leads to neurosis. That there is a correlation between emotionally disturbed children and those who have been exposed to sex education.

(Some of those opposed to sex education in schools are Dr John Meeks, Director of Child and Adolescent Services at the Psychiatric Institute of Washington; Dr Myre Sim, Professor of Psychiatry at the University of Ottowa; Dr Charles Sarnoff, Chief of Child Psychiatry at the Brookdale Hospital in Brooklyn; Dr Val Davajan, professor at UCLA Medical School.) Let us look, instead, for a programme that teaches respect and abstinence, such as one called “Sex Respect?” that has been successfully used in more than 1,200 schools in the United States. Then we will truly be preparing our youth to be responsible adults.

JOAN MOORE
Carenage