By Tamya Cox, Program Director
The federal government spent 206 million dollars on abstinence-only-until-marriage programs during 2006. Oklahoma received $690,342 for fiscal year 2005. Yet, as many of us know and the statistics show, not all teenagers are abstaining. In 2005, 48% of Oklahoma female high school students and 50% of male high school students admitted to having sex. These numbers clearly show that our teens are having sex, and now is not the time to turn a blind eye. We must arm our children with the knowledge and tools needed to prevent those who do have sex from unwanted pregnancies as well as contracting Sexually Transmitted Diseases (STDs).
Oklahoma schools are not required to teach sex education but must teach HIV/AIDS prevention. Many school districts who decide to teach sex education do so by teaching an abstinence-only-until-marriage curriculum. This curriculum gives medically inaccurate and biased information about the benefits of abstinence; it gives little or no instruction to those who do have sex about birth control and STD prevention. Young adults under the age of 25 are contracting the HIV virus an alarming rate.
Nationally and locally, we have seen a decline in the number of teen pregnancies, yet Oklahoma still ranks in the top ten. If we are teaching any sex education at all, we are teaching our students to wait until marriage, yet almost half of our students have had sex. So the message on which are spending millions of dollars, is not as effective as it should be. We need to know what our children are learning about sex, and we need to insist that a comprehensive sexuality education curriculum be taught.
Currently, no federal funds have been allocated for a comprehensive sex education curriculum. Comprehensive sex education teaches medically accurate, age-appropriate, unbiased information about sex. It teaches students that abstinence is the best method but includes other methods to prevent pregnancies and STDs. We cannot continue to stand by and let our children make uninformed, unintelligent decisions.
I urge you to contact your school and ask to review the information being taught. If the information is medically inaccurate or gives biased information, I urge you to contact your superintendent. Ask him or her to introduce a comprehensive sex education curriculum or contact the ACLU of Oklahoma for information on such curriculum.
If you want more information about comprehensive sex education or want to report what is being taught in your school’s classrooms, please contact me at tcox@acluok.org. You can also learn more by visiting www.takeissuetakecharge.org. Let’s truly enlighten, empower, and educate our children!