Colorado Progressive

Click over to the health section on the Google news website tonight and you’ll find–tucked among warnings about herbal remedies and articles celebrating fish oil–a sudden spike in headlines praising the merits of abstinence-only education in public schools.

Read through this article in the Washington Post, and eventually you’ll get to the numbers. The small study making big waves focused on a control group of 662 African American students in grades 6 and 7 in urban public schools.

Yeah, you read that right. Six hundred sixty-two. And of these, only 569 participants (the article cites 86%) were still enrolled two years later when researchers completed their followups.

I’m in favor of teaching abstinence as a viable and vital method to prevent teen pregnancy. It should be in the educators’ toolkit alongside candid talk about masturbation and condom use, and, you know, getting to second base. I’m all for talk about delayed gratification and the importance of recognizing sex as an emotional, not just a physical, act. I’m also thrilled that the study gave students options to live healthfully, such as eating well and getting exercise, because it only makes sense that students who feel good about themselves will have higher self-esteem, and students with higher-self esteem will, on the whole, wait longer to have sex. So by all means let’s talk about abstinence when we talk about sex.

Abstinence-only education, however, is another creature entirely. And I’m made a little uncomfortable by the zeal with which this small study is received. Let’s take a step back, evaluate the context, and ask appropriate questions about what this means for sex education in public schools.

Several critics of an abstinence-only approach said that the curriculum tested did not represent most abstinence programs. It did not take a moralistic tone, as many abstinence programs do. Most notably, the sessions encouraged children to delay sex until they are ready, not necessarily until married; did not portray sex outside marriage as never appropriate; and did not disparage condoms.

First off, I’m all for education–of any stripe–that’s not moralistic. And the fact that the curriculum in question neither relied on a false premise–that students will wait until marriage to have sex–nor undermined condom use is a very good thing. Understanding these factors is key to understanding that, perhaps, we’re not talking about the religious right’s abstinence-only education.

Next, however, it’s pretty important to ask about possible holes. Before we race to fund a thousand and one abstinence-only sex ed programs nationwide (and can we all appreciate the oxymoron at work here?) let’s get a few more small studies together, or preferably large studies, and see what happens as we look at other kids, other ages, other settings, and the overall reliability of self-reporting among teenaged participants. Indeed, the Los Angeles Times points out that even the study’s author agrees that more research must be done.