Students take part in abstinence education program

Wednesday, March 10, 2010

Nevada R-5 Schools, in cooperation with About Our Kids, Inc., has provided a comprehensive abstinence education program, Worth the Wait curriculum, for sixth though twelfth grade students. Worth the Wait training is designed to provide students with medical, legal, psychological, and socioeconomic information regarding teen sexual activity. The curriculum empowers adolescents with the information to help them establish stable, loving, and healthy relationships as married adults. Students in each separate grade, who returned signed parental interaction forms, were put in a drawi9ng for an IPOD and a $25 gift card from Wal-Mart. The winners were (left to right): sixth grade - Skyler Fenton, Jimmie Dye; seventh grade - Dakota Thron, Shelby Gundy; eighth grade - Elizabeth Nowak, and Kelsie Fanning. --Steve Moyer/Daily Mail

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Every study ever done, shows that abstinence programs, don't work.

-- Posted by Leland Gaunt on Wed, Mar 10, 2010, at 3:56 PM

Response by Steve Moyer:
That is incorrect. There have been several studies showing a marked difference in behavior of groups of youths having various types of sex education over extended periods. Just one of the many examples, this from the Archives of Pediatric & Adolescent Medicine:

Efficacy of a Theory-Based Abstinence-Only Intervention Over 24 Months

A Randomized Controlled Trial With Young Adolescents

John B. Jemmott III, PhD; Loretta S. Jemmott, PhD, RN; Geoffrey T. Fong, PhD

Arch Pediatr Adolesc Med. 2010;164(2):152-159.

Objective To evaluate the efficacy of an abstinence-only intervention in preventing sexual involvement in young adolescents.

Design Randomized controlled trial.

Setting Urban public schools.

Participants A total of 662 African American students in grades 6 and 7.

Interventions An 8-hour abstinence-only intervention targeted reduced sexual intercourse; an 8-hour safer sex--only intervention targeted increased condom use; 8-hour and 12-hour comprehensive interventions targeted sexual intercourse and condom use; and an 8-hour health-promotion control intervention targeted health issues unrelated to sexual behavior. Participants also were randomized to receive or not receive an intervention maintenance program to extend intervention efficacy.

Outcome Measures The primary outcome was self-report of ever having sexual intercourse by the 24-month follow-up. Secondary outcomes were other sexual behaviors.

Results The participants' mean age was 12.2 years; 53.5% were girls; and 84.4% were still enrolled at 24 months. Abstinence-only intervention reduced sexual initiation (risk ratio [RR], 0.67; 95% confidence interval [CI], 0.48-0.96). The model-estimated probability of ever having sexual intercourse by the 24-month follow-up was 33.5% in the abstinence-only intervention and 48.5% in the control group. Fewer abstinence-only intervention participants (20.6%) than control participants (29.0%) reported having coitus in the previous 3 months during the follow-up period (RR, 0.94; 95% CI, 0.90-0.99). Abstinence-only intervention did not affect condom use. The 8-hour (RR, 0.96; 95% CI, 0.92-1.00) and 12-hour comprehensive (RR, 0.95; 95% CI, 0.91-0.99) interventions reduced reports of having multiple partners compared with the control group. No other differences between interventions and controls were significant.

Conclusion Theory-based abstinence-only interventions may have an important role in preventing adolescent sexual involvement.

Trial Registration clinicaltrials.gov Identifier: NCT00640653

Author Affiliations: School of Medicine and Annenberg School for Communication (Dr J. B. Jemmott), and School of Nursing Science (Dr L. S. Jemmott), University of Pennsylvania, Philadelphia; and Department of Psychology, University of Waterloo, and Ontario Institute for Cancer Research, Waterloo, Ontario, Canada (Dr Fong).
Well if they don't abstain from it I hope they know about safer sex. We all know what happened to Bristol Palin!

-- Posted by Glynn on Wed, Mar 10, 2010, at 6:54 PM
It is not the schools responsability to teach this, is falls back on to the parents. I came through school in the 80's and 90's and we never had anything in school about sex. Except in health class, we all came out alright. The school thinks thats they need to stick their nose's into everything. But they can't keep the picketeres off of the side walks.

It should be up to the parents when they to talk to their kids about sex, not the school. Maybe the school needs to ask the parents about things like this before taking it upon theirselfs.

-- Posted by Darren on Thu, Mar 11, 2010, at 8:05 PM
Because unfortunately alot of parents Don't know how to talk about sex with their kids and the kids start having sex before they even know what it is and teen girls end up pregnant. Someone needs to tell them in a responsible way.

-- Posted by Glynn on Thu, Mar 11, 2010, at 8:57 PM
Maybe if adults in the ommunity were a little better example......

-- Posted by Custom 1911 on Mon, Mar 15, 2010, at 11:01 AM
Many parents aren't educated enough on the topic to be able to teach their children much about it. Also, it's much harder for many parents to speak about this topic with their children than it is for an educator. Educators won't use slang terminology and being an outside source with educational materials makes them the perfect person to teach sex ed. I believe abstinence should be taught in school, if for no other reason than health. I too have seen the studies that show these classes do have positive effects. It's immature people who are ashamed of sex that are afraid of their children learning anything at all about sex, including from theirselves. This leads to children finding out about it on their own. Unfortunately, they'll learn the hard way.

-- Posted by supernaturally on Mon, Mar 15, 2010, at 1:06 PM
My Step-Mothers gave me two small packages to keep in my wallet in case I needed them. The advice they gave me was before having sex with a girl was to think about if you want to marry her in case you had to, and to notice what her mother looks like. It was good advice and it worked. That was my sex education in the 60's. Three years in Germany taught me more good life time lessons.

-- Posted by GED on Thu, Mar 18, 2010, at 7:37 PM
That's funny, I always told my boys to look at a girls mother if they want to see what she's going to look like in the future. I tell my girls the same about boys and their fathers.

-- Posted by ccmom on Fri, Mar 19, 2010, at 8:18 AM

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