Risky Behavior Indeed

There is burying your head in the sand...and then there is burying your head in the sand, closing your eyes, crossing your fingers, and holding your breath in the hopes that whatever evil is lurking out there will just go away. Wake county school board officials have crossed over into this extreme territory of wishful thinking.

I've previously expressed my belief that abstinence-only education is simply burying your head in the sand. It doesn't work, and worse it endangers the very kids you are trying to protect. In case you've never noticed, teenagers take their social cues not from their high school teachers but from the entertainment media, so the only way that using an abstinence-only sex ed would work is if you shielded your pupils from all the books, magazines, newspapers, television, movies, and music which hint that some teenagers have sex.

Fortunately the adults at the Center for Disease Control realize that pretending that teenagers never have sex is neither realistic nor helpful. Every two years they send out a Youth Risk Behavior survey to middle and high school students around the country asking questions such as:
Do you smoke?
Do you use marijuana?
Do you drink?
Do you wear a helmet when you ride your bike?

The high school students are asked about their sexual behaviors as well:
Have you ever had sexual intercourse?
The last time you had sexual intercourse did you or your partner use a condom?

The survey is used to gather information so risky behaviors can be addressed. In 2003, for example, the survey revealed that 3/4 of high school seniors in North Carolina had had sex. This is important information.

But here in Wake County--which includes the state capitol of Raleigh--we have decided to ignore this fact. We use an abstinence-only approach which means no information is given to students about what to do if they do engage in sex. If you are in school and are having sex, we don't want to know.

Therefore, the students here in Wake county won't be taking part in the national survey. In fact, they won't be taking part in the modified survey put out by The North Carolina Department of Health and Human Services because it is too "suggestive." The school board has decided that asking high school students seven questions about their possible sexual behaviors might suggest to the students that some high school students might be having sex.

So let's just keep pretending to ourselves that these students don't have sex, and don't know other kids are having sex. After all, what have we got to lose?