Melissa Harris-Lacewell

Marc Lamont Hill

Melissa,

First of all, let’s not dismiss the whole “lock them in their rooms forever” thing so easily. I’ve done some research on this, it’s definitely doable. But I digress…

Like you, I was devastated by the news that black girls are being infected at such exorbitant rates. As an educational researcher, I can’t help but think about the ways that contemporary approaches to sex education have only intensified the problem.

Over the past decade, congress has dumped millions of dollars into abstinence-only programming in order to curb teen pregnancy and disease infection. As most of us suspect, the programs simply don’t work. Based on data from multiple studies, students enrolled in abstinence-only programs had sex at the same age as those who didn’t. (According to a study conducted by Mathematica, students in both programs had sex at the age of 14.9)

In addition to being fiscally wasteful, abstinence-only education programs are notorious for distributing questionable, ambiguous, and outright fallacious information about sexual health. According to a 2004 study of 13 programs, 11 provided serious factual errors about the failure rate of contraceptives, the effectiveness of condoms in preventing HIV, and complete lies about the relationship between abortion and infertitily, premature birth, and ectopic pregnancy. Through this misinformation, abstinence-only advocates place young people at a greater risk for disease and unwanted pregnancy.

Many schools have also used “purity pledges” as a means of reinforcing the ideals of abstinence-only education. Like the curricular interventions, however, these strategies only reinforce the very things that they are designed to thwart. According to a study published in the American Journal of Sociology, purity pledges only work when the students taking them are in the minority. In such settings, students used the pledges as part of a counter-cultural movement that was linked to their identity development. As a result, students delayed their first sexual experience by nearly 18 months. (Note: This was found only to be effective among 15-17 year olds with no effect on older teens) The more students that take the pledges, however, the less effective they are at postponing sex. In fact, in places where the majority of teens took the pledge, there was no change in students’ sexual decision making.

Of course, some will argue that “something is better than nothing,” and that purity pledges are valuable even if they can only “save” a few teens from the horrors of sex. In reality, however, the slight gains made by purity pledges are countervailed by other factors linked to the pledges. For example, purity pledgers are considerably more likely to engage in unprotected oral, vaginal, and anal sex than non-pledgers. Also, purity pledgers are much more likely not to get tested for STDs, as well as recognize or report them. Since STD rates are similar among pledgers and non-pledgers despite this underreporting, it is likely that purity pledges actually increase the chances of getting an STD. Why? Because purity pledges and the abstinence-only training that accompanies them often deprive our youth of the informational tools necessary to protect themselves.

To fix these problems, it is critical that educators and activists push for a complete transformation of sexual health education in the United States. To be sure, such a transformation includes abstinence education as a desirable option, particularly for teenagers. In addition, as you mentioned, we must provide accurate information about how our bodies function, how diseases and infections are obtained, and how to protect ourselves from undesirable outcomes. This type of multi-faceted education does not encourage students to have sex, but to take responsibility for their own sexual health.

Finally, we must effect a shift from sex education to sexuality education. This means that we must no longer exhaust our pedagogical and intellectual resources scaring children, particularly young women, into “saving themselves” by exposing them to a littany of atrocious consequences for having sex. In addition to being ineffective, sexist, and heterosexist, these approaches to sex education ignore the critical importance of desire in our sexual lives.

Rather than merely teaching youth about how, when, and why they should say “no” when asked to have sex, we must also begin to engage them in conversations about what it means to want to ask the question. As scholars like Michelle Fine have argued, this “missing discourse of desire” obscures the critical role that young people must play as active agents in their own physical, mental, social, and sexual well-being.

As a parent, this is scary business. But it’s the only thing that can save our children.