by Susan Brinkmann, OCDS
Staff Writer
(June 5, 2008) A national campaign is underway to educate parents about the contents of many of the sex ed curricula currently in use in U.S. schools, then empower them to bring about change.
The campaign, called Parents for Truth, is being organized by the National Abstinence Education Association (NAEA), a Washington-based advocacy group, that seeks to enroll one million parents within the next three years who are concerned about the graphic content of many of the sex ed programs being used in the nation’s schools.
“Parents are being told that the content of the curricula in their children’s classrooms stress abstinence but include information to make decisions in case they become sexually active,” said Valerie Huber, NAEA executive director. “But what most of these programs really provide is explicit how-to information that give teens a green light for activities that put them at risk.”
For instance, the widely used “Be Proud! Be Responsible!” program encourages activities such as showering together and hiding condoms on one’s body, then asking a partner to find it. Several programs reviewed by the Department of Health and Human Services’ Administration for Children and Families (ACF) last year were found to encourage teens to engage in oral sex and other “safer sex” practices. One program targeting 10-14 year olds gave detailed information about how to obtain an abortion and reassured children that they don’t have to tell their parents if they visit a clinic or get an abortion.
The problem is that most parents don’t know what’s actually in these programs, Huber said, but when they find out, the overwhelming majority disapproves.
This was what the NAEA discovered last year when they commissioned Zogby International to do a poll that, unlike other polls, included actual content information from both abstinence and comprehensive sex ed programs..
“By the end of the poll, parents, regardless of ideology, political party, geographic location, etc. favored abstinence ed over comprehensive sex ed by a two to one margin,” she said.
“Based on this information, we decided that parents are being misled. They’re being told one thing, but when they actually look at what’s being taught, they see it’s something very different.”
Parents for Truth aims to make parents aware of what the programs contain, then empower them to do something about it in their communities. “Our goal is to become a mobilized force to provide a response to the liberal special interest groups like Planned Parenthood and SEICUS (Sex Ed Information Caucus of the United States) and Advocates for Youth who have used private foundation funds to go into local communities and to pressure governors not to accept abstinence education funding.”
The campaign is kicking off just as Congress is debating whether to authorize $190 million in federal funding for abstinence programs. Critics say the programs are ineffective, but according to the ACF study, comprehensive sex ed programs aren’t much better. According to their report, many of the programs they reviewed contained “medical inaccuracies and none of them had any impact on delaying sexual debut in children.”
Most comprehensive sex ed programs are based on the premise that teens are going to have sex anyway, so why not teach them how to protect themselves. However, chastity educators say this attitude sells teens short. They’re more than willing to be challenged to take the higher ground of abstinence when it’s presented.
“The problem is that too many teens today don’t know what that moral high ground is because they’re not hearing it from the adults in their lives,” said internationally known chastity educator, Molly Kelly, who has worked with teens for 25 years.
“Lets face it, our teens today are being bombarded by wrong messages and too often they’re hearing them from adults. If parents are relying solely on teachers to tell their kids about sexuality, then the parents have failed in their role as primary educators of their children.”
In this day and age, opting to leave a child’s sex education up to a school can be a risky choice.
“Organizations like SEICUS and Planned Parenthood receive millions of dollars to advocate a message that is not in the best interest of youth,” Huber said. “It’s time that parents took this battle back.”
For more information about Parents For Truth, visit the website at http://www.parentsfortruth.org/
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