We’re all familiar with that signature "Mean Girls" sex-ed class line: “Don’t have sex, because you will get pregnant and die.”
We laugh at the extremity of it, the stupidity of it, and yet it appears that U.S. sexual education is just as bad, if not worse.
Publicly-funded sex education is, just in the name, inherently misleading. It’s been proven time and time again that most forms of sexual education are not at all intended to educate, but to scare, deceive and manipulate.
Twenty-seven states in US have abstinence-based education programs. The fact that public institutions teach ideologies straight out of the 1950s is bad enough. What’s worse is that only 12 states in the U.S. actually require medically accurate information in their sex ed. courses, and only eight states require that the information required be unbiased.
That means that sex education programs — programs that by providing important information can potentially raise awareness of disease prevention, prevent relationship abuse and stop unwanted pregnancies — are actually allowed to skew statistics and provide false information in order to promote their own agendas.
To add to that, a congressional report done by Representative Henry Waxmen reported that more than 80 percent of abstinence-only programs contain misleading or just blatantly false information.
Some of the curricula highlighted told students that HIV/AIDS can be spread through sweat and tears, that condoms fail to prevent the spread of HIV/AIDS 31 percent of the time, and that women who get an abortion are 10 percent more likely to become sterile as well, when in fact, there is no correlation between abortion and sterility.
Many of these programs "blurred science and religion," advocated damaging, fairly sexist gender stereotypes and downplayed the effectiveness of contraceptives.
When it comes down to it, the motive behind this middle-aged form of education is not driven by knowledge at all — it’s fear. The point isn’t to teach students safe-sex practices, or to caution them about protecting against STDs. It’s to instill fear and reinforce the cultural taboo we’ve placed on anything sexual.
Studies have actually shown that these programs are ineffective in hindering sex before marriage, what they claim is their primary goal. A 2004 study done in 11 different states concluded that the sexual activity of students who got an abstinence-based education was no different than students who didn’t.
Other studies have shown that, when sexually active, those who were taught through abstinence-only methods were less likely to use contraceptives, leading to a higher risk of pregnancy and STDs. In fact, students who actually got a comprehensive sexual-education were 50 percent less likely to have an unwanted pregnancy.
Overall, despite this widely employed method of “education,” 95 percent of Americans have sex before they’re married. Shouldn’t legislatures form information around factually based standards and not those completely removed from reality?
They should, but their decisions are bent by the one thing that has more power than basic common sense: money.
To put the issue in simple terms, the U.S. government offers states grants, Title V grants, for states that make an abstinence-based curriculum a requirement. If the state Legislatures refuse the funding, which only 23 states have so far, then they have to pay for the programs themselves, covering the amount the federal government would have paid.
The federal funding began under the Reagan Administration in 1981 with $4 million annually invested in the program, and since then, the amount has grown and grown, reaching a peak of $176 million annually during George W. Bush’s administration. Although President Obama has spoken out against this form of sexual education, the administration still provided funding of about $55 million in 2012.
Despite this almost idiotic, definitely outdated trend in the public education system, the U.S. still puts down millions of dollars annually to support scare tactics and deception. The sad truth is that the current state of U.S. sex ed. is basically the equivalent of a "Mean Girls" line taken way too literally.
Reach the columnist at mjanetsk@asu.edu or follow her on Twitter @meganjanetsky
Editor’s note: The opinions presented in this column are the author’s and do not imply any endorsement from The State Press or its editors.
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