Sex education

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my basic problem with people who promote abstinence only education is that they seem to think their children are ret*d. Literally, they believe their children are so mentally deficient that it would never occur to them to attempt to jam their penis inside a vagina. My boss is a Cristian scientist and her opinion on the matter was "well, I just think if we didn't teach them about it they wouldn't find out" which is the most inane opinion I have ever heard.

They are going to have sex. Saying "no" to a teenager is worth about as much as leaving a steak on the floor and expecting the dog not to eat it. 1 dog in a million will actually leave it alone, some of them will wait till you aren't looking and the rest will just snag it anyways because it's a steak and they are a dog. Teenagers are wired to want to have sex, already in a rebellious phase, and are unlikely to do simple things like pick a sock off the floor on command much less eschew literally the most entertaining recreational act they could possibly engage in. And yes, it is a recreational act. If you shunt all the religious BS aside why do people have sex??? Because it feels good! It satisfies an inherent human need/want and causes orgasm/ dopamine release. The fact that the body rewards the mind specifically to promote copulating with the goal of procreating is not terribly important to the actual decision making process.

Children are not stupid. They are not mentally deficient. They WILL figure out how to copulate whether or not we tell them anything. Giving them a grounding of facts to make their decisions on is not the same as promoting some pro-erotic agenda.

Please stop. You are just taking it to extremes. I am not talking about abstinence only education. No one is calling any child stupid, You must acknowledge they are kids not adults. I am so sick of adults treating kids like they are just little adults well they aren't. It's so irritating then adults go on to complain their kids don't have values or morals. Well, it has to start someplace, doesn't it. Someone has to set an example for them to follow and if you are not there to provide that, don't complain when the outcome doesn't live up to your high and mighty standards.
Studies on the developing brain prove they are not mini adults. You are being very unfair when you refuse to acknowledge this.
People who do not wish to discuss abstinence are just as narrow minded as those who want abstinence only btw.

Honey, I mentioned this before: you don't get to lecture me about evolution, ok? I know more about it than you do. I'm a biologist.
Species can *reproduce* just fine without sex: budding, self-fertilization, parthenogenesis. Sex *evolved* in order for there to be a controlled mixing and matching of genes within a population, which happens to have occurred with each generation. That was its original purpose. Just because something evolves for one purpose, however, does not mean that it retains that original purpose as its only, or even its primary, function in every species everywhere. Species that mate only when the female is fertile, and only when the offspring will be born at the most opportune time of year, can be said to use sex solely for reproduction. Examples are wolves or deer. Species that mate willy-nilly, regardless of fertility, even when there is absolutely zero chance of reproduction, cannot be said to be having sex solely for reproductive purposes. In humans, sex is also used for pair bonding and, yes, for fun. In dolphins (one of which was recently filmed masturbating with a dead fish in an aquarium) it definitely has some components of fun as well, so we're not the only ones.

I'm not ignoring psychological issues, I'm facing reality. You can do pro-abstinence, but still comprehensive, sex ed. Knowing about birth control options isn't going to make a girl run out and ask the first boy she sees to have sex in the locker room with her after school, but it will give the girls who do have serious boyfriends more options if they want to go there. And, if the girl in question *isn't* naturally monogamous, which not all people are, she's less likely to get an STD and/or get knocked up if she has more options.

Once again, I'm not saying that the school should tell people 'how to have sex.' Describing the basic physiology and the purpose of various organs in a didactic manner is a very, very far cry from 'telling people how to have sex.' Furthermore, I was mortified to have to listen to the lectures I did, just like pretty much everyone else there - and I'm glad that we had to take the class, anyway. Sometimes a little temporary embarrassment is worth it.
Basically, you're saying that kids should be condemned to muddling though bad sex, ignorance that will likely persist into adulthood, and a greater likelihood of STDs, just in order to save themselves from being embarrassed for one month a year, along with everyone else.

This isn't a logical argument: it is a political argument, thus discussing a middle ground is pointless. The only available options are the extremes because we are talking about macro-scale legislative problems/solutions and not individualized solutions. The reason I am arguing against abstinence only and in favor of more comprehensive sex ed is because abstinence only (any that one guy's insufficient 1 week ungraded class) are the only things I disagree with strongly enough to have an opinion worth the time to express, I'm fine with most middle ground arguments except that in general the "middle ground" involves doing things like removing all mention of the clitoris from textbooks, reading bible passages, and giving intentionally false information about the prevelance and transmission rates (and methods) of STDs and the failure rates of birth control options. I don't have a link but that is literally what is going on in Texas right now.

I don't think children are little adults. I think that they are woefully unprepared in middle school and high school for the emotional stress of a sexual relationship and that it is generally a terrible idea. I also know that there is not much I or anyone else can do to stop them from having sex. Keep in mind, only around 20-50% of high school students actually have sex before they graduate (or at least 50% was the average in my state). So it's not like every kid is out there f*****g willy nilly. But I'd much rather the emotionally immature 14yo girl who has decided to engage in a sexual relationship know about condoms than only know that the same adults who assign her homework and give her detention think she shouldn't be having sex with her boyfriend. The same reason children should not be having sex are the reason they are going to: They don't have the emotional maturity to make the decisions we would like them to.

QFT.

One thing that I heard in my 'sex ed' class was, 'If he says, 'you'd do it if you loved me,' then he doesn't really love you.' Along with all of the technical info about what to do when we did start having sex, we were told that it was ok to wait until we were ready and that we shouldn't let anyone pressure us into sex too early for us.

What I learned in sex ed class what i hadnt already learned via the discovery channel and reading books how a child is concieved out of curiosity I learned how to use a condom when the time I lost my virginity at 17 to my ex who was 18 at the time preventing a teen pregnancy. I gues learning responsibility and practicing safe sex as well with all the STDs like HIV and Syphilis and Hepetitus etc amok.

Since most of the discussion seems to be about the abstinence stuff that is popular in the US, here's a chart:

America has a higher birth rate in general than western Europe as well as a much more diverse population. You can't compare America to Europe. The birthrate in America is a lot of healthier, our population isn't shrinking while Europe and Asia as well face demographic crisis.

Yes, but the teenage birth rates are disproportionally larger in the US. And only a few countries in the EU are actually shrinking. With the huge population density in Western Europe lack of growth is probably a good thing. Besides, this graph was only about the 15-19 year old girls. I'd expect most of the pregnancies in that age category to be unplanned or even unwanted.

A good portion of pregnancies at any age are unplanned, I know I wasn't planned and my mother was a 24 year old college graduate. Europe has a disproportionately low birth rate, I don't think there are any European countries above replacement level so the only way for them to maintain their current population is for massive immigration which causes its own problems. That's all besides the point, I don't think the rate of teen pregnancy in this country is significantly effected how we teach sex education in this country.

The "mass immigration" is not happening, it's just rhetoric from anti-EU parties. The US is more immigrant-friendly than most parts of the EU. From that list only Italy and Germany are below replacement level if I remember correctly. And teenage pregnancies are not that strongly correlated with overall population growth. Russia (and Eastern Europe in general) is shrinking very fast, yet teenage pregnancies are very high over there.

But what does this have to do with the topic of sexual education? In which way is teaching about human hormones and their influence on female 28 day cycle or the existence of intern body organs, linked to any moral lesson? Neither does sexual education promote you to have sex, nor does it tell you, not to do it. The knowledge of the bloodflow in my body, and how it works, and how it leads to supporting my body with oxygen and nutrition, is as well not promoting or telling you not do blood donation. Only because I know how my blood system works, does not mean, that I know want to play around with my blood. So why should education of as well normal other biological function be linked to if I want to have sex suddenly? Either a kids wants sex, or he does not want, but that hardly will be linked to an biology lesson?

Fertility rates 2013 (same countries as in trollcatman's previous post:

Bulgaria: 1.43
United States: 2.06
Romania: 1.31
United Kingdom: 1.90
Ireland: 2.01
Israel: 2.65
Canada: 1.59
Germany: 1.42
France: 2.08
Norway: 1.77
Italy: 1.41
Sweden: 1.67
Denmark: 1.73
Netherlands: 1.78
Switzerland: 1.53

Source:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_so ... #Countries

Notice that France has a slightly higher fertility rate than the US, but a teen pregnancy rate almost 4 times lower. Also notice that countries like Bulgaria and Romania have similar teen pregnancy rates as the US, but much lower fertility rates.

It is obvious, then, that the fertility rate cannot explain the massive discrepancy in teen pregnancy between the US and European countries.

trolling around wikipedia it seems like the abortion rate in these countries are much much higher than the US. 58.4% of teen pregnancies in France are aborted while 35.2% in the US. 69.7% in Sweden, 65.3% in Denmark, 48.7% in Romania, 50.4% in Italy, 57.4 in Norway, 49.8% in Canada. There are a few discrepancies
as well but I thought it was kind of interesting. These are pretty old numbers tho.

I'd like to see proof that more comprehensive sex education actually significantly lowers the rate of teen pregnancy, is there any evidence of that? That's giving way too much credit teachers. I would put it more to having a more diverse population and culture. If you broke it down to race, religion, location, class, etc then I am sure you would see a pretty big difference. America is a country of 310+ million people and cannot be compared to the little hamlets of Europe, if you compared them to specific US states then you'll see it can paint a different picture.

I already provided that proof in this very thread.
http://www.wrongplanet.net/postp5853895 ... t=#5853895

Would you like me to produce additional scientific studies - for you to ignore as well - that reach the same conclusion?

Start here:
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/?ter ... +pregnancy
http://www.sciencedirect.com/science?_o ... archtype=a


Actually, 42 out of 50 US states have a higher teen birth rate than even the United Kingdom (at 27 per 1,000 girls aget 15-19), and the lowest scoring US state (New Hampshire with 18.9) is still at a much higher level than a lot of European countries (as per the previously posted graph).

Source: http://www.cdc.gov/nchs/data/databriefs/db46.pdf

Oh, and... "little hamlets" of Europe?

France: 67 million people
Germany: 82 million people
Italy: 61 million people
Poland: 38 million people
Spain: 47 million people
United Kingdom: 63 million people

Those are very interesting numbers. Looks like the US needs to make abortion more accessible for teenagers who get pregnant so they don't have to carry their zefs to term.