Letters to the Editor
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The Federal government spends 10x per capita
On old people vs children. This is generally because AARP is one of the largest, if not the largest best funded lobbying group in the US. This is because children don't pay taxes or vote. So screw them.
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Thank you for advocating for our teens
Dr. Parikh's letter "Of condoms, Clinton, Obama and McCain was amazingly on target and timely. As someone who oversee's a teen resource center which includes a health clinic forcused on comprehensive sex education including prevention of teen pregnancy and the spread of STI's, I am so aware of the importance of advocacy such as this. As parents and providers we need to stop sticking our heads in the sand when it comes to a wide range of risky adolescent behavior and start ensuring that teens have access to information in order to make healthy, informed choices. Bush's policies around sex education for our children have had tremendously negative, dire consequences nationwide. We truly must push toward a shift in policy with our next election and push candidates to incorporate a strong message regarding where they stand before we will cast our ballots.
Robin Stein, LCSW
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ANOTHER MYOPIC PERSPECTIVE
When are young adults going to start standing up for themselves? It seems to me that even before the so-called dark ages of the Bush administration, there was just way too much sex going on among younger and younger kids. Now that 25% are estimated to have an STD, will we require Hollywood to put their clothes back on, CNN to stop glorifying Brittany and Paris, and host of other gutter tactics perpetuated by corporate greed to sell somebody something?
Got news for you, Rahul, this didn't start with Bush. Check out the stats on kids having kids without the benefit of marriage and see what THAT says about how far we've dropped down the chain.
The kids have been taught at school for years what causes pregnancy, what causes diseases, and how to prevent it. Their ignorance has obviously reached epidemic stages. Don't ask which candidates are going to cure something that no President has any real power to cure, correct, stop, or otherwise prevent. Ask where the hell are their parents - BOTH OF THEM - and what the hell were THEY thinking?
Another glorious round of funding with a new name suited for 2008 and a hip-hop music theme is not prevention. It's just another round of funding to line yet another pocket somewhere.
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Sex education should be something more
I have published a fiction novel and written several columns about sex education and this article missed some points that I believe to be important.
In 1980, my home state of New Jersey passed a Family Life Education Act mandating not only sex education but family life education in all grades. The phrase "family life" has too often been shunted aside, though I don't believe that is intentional.
Family life education is about teaching relationships and responsibility, the very two issues that conservative pundits harp on when they oppose sex education or propose an abstinence-only alternative. Family life education can be taught in public schools without raising religious arguments or forcing teachers into a difficult position of preaching abstinence. Instead teachers would be teaching what it means to be parents. That does more to discourage sex under uncertainty than any abstinence lecture.
Another important lesson that I've learned about sex education is that it, more than any class excluding driver's ed, is a subject that must be taught well. Teachers not only need to provide information; they must also be sensitive to a classroom of students who do not travel in the same social circles after class. The person who chooses to abstain out of choice deserves as much protection from ridicule as the more sexually active classmate who needs help. Sex education is not something you distill down to boring lectures from gym teachers; you need more competant professionals.
I don't believe that presidential candidates need to take a position on sex education, nor should they propose to use the federal treasury to espouse their point of view on elementary and secondary school students, as the current administration has done. This is an issue where parents, teachers, clergy and the medical community can work together at a state and local level.
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A quibble
I agree wholeheartedly with Dr. Parikh's position. I'd also like to point out to one of the other posters who avers that this predates Bush, that people have been having sex as adolescents throughout the history of humankind. In societies where there is an open discussion of and education about sexuality and sex there are in fact better health statistics than in the US. We know this from comprehensive studies done, not by physicians, and that is my quibble with Dr. Parikh's essay, but rather by public health professionals. Some of these are physicians, many of them are Doctors, but not of the clinical sort, Doctors of Public Health and Ph.D.s whose substantial training in biostatistics, epidemiology and health behavior goes towards analyzing health data appropriately who have been designing, conducting and publishing the analysis that are cited. Dr. Parikh says Doctors in the article and it is important that the general public become more familiar with the the true quality of work being done. The majority of us in Public Health have been appalled at what has happened over the past eight years and have first hand knowledge of how political choices have hidden and eliminated in many cases, solid scientific work based on well established methods.
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Hypocracy much?
For years conservatives have complained that sex-ed should be left up to the parents. Fair enough. But once their "Godly" president got into power, they immediatly threw their own belief system out the window. This is less about effective sex-ed to me so much as it is about double standards. "It's okay if we're the ones doing it." We see this in a lot of things conservatives do. If Clinton bombs Iraq, he's "wagging the dog" to distract from his sex life (something else that wouldn't have been an issue if conservatives hadn't made it one) but if Bush does it then he's "protecting us from the terrorists". If Clinton cheats on his wife, then he must step down for the moral integrity of the country, if David Vitter bangs a hooker, he is applauded on the floor of the senate for standing up to those evil democrats and their nosy interefering (the only one they actually cut loose was Larry Craig and that was just because it involved that icky butt sex!). "Abstinance only" is still a form of sex-ed, just because it doesn't work, doesn't mean it isn't the same type of thing. And like all things republicans do, it's a failed pipe dream that usually makes things worse then the problem it was trying to fix.