Wake County Puts "Youth at Risk"
Letter to the Editor
News and Observer
Wednesday, December 24, 2003
Youth at Risk
The sex education proposal introduced at the Wake school board meeting on Dec. 16 seems absolutely surreal when one looks at the 2003 North Carolina Youth Risk Behavior Survey.
It found that 73.5 percent of the state's high school class of 2003 had sex before graduation. This is zero improvement from the last time sexual behavior was surveyed in1997 when the senior class had not been educated under the Abstinence Until Marriage law.
Of the remaining 26.5 percent, one wonders how many will remain abstinent for eight more years until they turn 26 (the average age of marriage in America). Clearly, the failure rate of commitment to abstinence is extremely high -- immensely higher than the failure rate of contraceptives.
All responsible adults want an expected standard of abstinence for school-aged children, but it is dangerous to pretend that all of them will make that wise choice.
The radical right in Wake succeeded last year in limiting sex education in grades seven through nine to Abstinence Until Marriage Only, effectively denying the majority of parents their choice of an Abstinence Plus curriculum which is recommended by health professionals. But they aren't satisfied. Their proposed new policy even bans school personnel from encouraging sexually active students to use contraception.
The scariest thing is that they want to control how school social workers, nurses, teachers, psychologists and counselors handle children's problems. These professionals will be required to throw their training, judgment and professional ethics aside, along with medical accuracy, and launch into the 11 teachings imposed by politicians pandering to the religious right.
Janet Palmquist
Raleigh
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