Suffering in the world is the crucible in which the soul is tested until it is purified and the process should not be interrupted by the actions of government, because the only action that others can take comes when someone has suffered enough to want to seek religious salvation.  This is actually the basis of an approach to public policy, based in Puritan or Calvinist doctrines.  These aren’t fiction, but very real.  In fact, the Bush Administration was the closest that the US government is going to come to enacting Calvinism as sort of Constitutional governing principle.  Various social policies came from this thinking, including abstinence only sex education.

Ironically, one can also arrive at something of a similar sort, in effect, through a search for the ultimate definition backed by data.  Probably, one of the reasons that the system has become bogged down. 

There is some common sense at the root of this.  Policies based on the Calvinist doctrine of doing nothing to intervene in natural suffering should be considered medieval.  Educating young people about the true nature of reality and the options that should be considered has to be considered basic. 

In Texas, when Bush was Governor, there was also a case in which the Texas Department of Health was being sued, along with Planned Parenthood.  The issue was parental notification in cases where teenage girls sought education about reproductive options through Planned Parenthood.  It sounds good that parent should be told when something important may be happening to their girl.  However, there were some cases of parents who beat their daughter so severely, that death resulted.  Very hard and stern reaction, sanctioned by a strain within Christianity that some find difficult to understand. Thus, the interest in allowing the girl herself to be in control. 

Teenagers are just coming out of childhood and are just discovering that there are other people in the world, whose reality may not be as impressive as their own needs and drives.  They need guidance and a certain percentage either get none or the wrong sort. 

It has been observed many times before that it is a miracle that so many of us actually survive teenage years.  Lots of potential calamities.

There is no reluctance to discuss “real” world phenomena for what it is and not as the paradigm of an entire population.  The story is poignant as no doubt there are many.  But for the world’s sake, they are not The Model for the aggregation of poor.  And the other fallacy you bring to mind as echoed by inhabitants of TD, is to judge an entire group by a generalization of their being incapable of understanding or pursuing their interests.  These are the miscellaneous and always mysterious “they.” Referring to the inclusive “all” is a bad habit of several who post on these forums that I have frequently called out to provide examples.  You did provide an example, Rosarita, who you then elevated to the epitome of a hypothetical group, the poor.  There is no terra firma there.

It seems a characteristic of humans is to be impatient.  This can be a flaw or could prove to be a virtue. StuartH perceptively notes it is too soon to expect a favorable or worse reality that would be furnished by this Democratic administration and Congress regarding education reform, which would include a comprehensive sex education.  Changes of a societal nature are as a matter of course glacially slow.  There is something to be said for “awareness is empowerment” since awareness if the first step toward progress.  But that is all it is, a first step.  It is not a program.  To mistake it for The Program is shortsightedness about the scope of the problem.  To find out if anything is “good for the soul,” there needs to be some consensus for whatever a soul is, and if there really is such a thing!  Talking about “the good” of anything presumes some universal principle and I dare say that no one comes forward to define what that is that would apply universally.  I suspect there is some definition but I have not yet run across it.

We have to ask ourselves if public education is truly for the common good?  If we are to take the advice of Epictetus, a Greek Stoic who wrote, “We must not believe the many, who say that only free people ought to be educated, but we should rather believe the philosophers who say that only the educated are free,” then we also have to ask ourselves if being free has any intrinsic worth.  Seems like these are silly questions, for who wouldn’t want to be educated or free?  So those aren’t the real questions, are they?  We have to ask what it means to be free?  If another has any right at all to deprive one of freedom?  Under what conditions is it right to deprive another of freedom? For surely there are some proper reasons.  Then if we all “ought to be educated,” how this is to be effected?  And with a purpose of the discovering truth, viewing the entire problem with an objective and unemotional lens, how to determine who is in a final analysis responsible?  Is it the female who gets pregnant? The male who impregnates? A religion that promotes pregnancy? The parents who do not teach values of human life and responsibility for producing a life? The promiscuous society? All of the above? 

Once we clearly answer at least these relevant questions, we can turn with some promise of an answer to the problem of teenage or other unwanted pregnancy and all the ramifications that comes with a multifarious society that doesn’t take the appropriate measures to eliminate it as far as possible.

“My remark about the dumb ox driven by a sharp stick was a sarcastic characterization of bourgeois attitudes toward the poor which are being echoed here, for example, that the poor lack agency and are incapable of understanding or pursuing their interests.”

When you talk about “the poor” it sounds like speculation about “Others,” not informed by knowledge beyond the one case.  Most likely this comes from the phenomenon of quick typing in this sort of discussion format. 

When Bush was Governor of Texas, in the mid nineties, he promoted the Abstinence Only approach in public schools, which prevented teachers from educating kids about sex from an “awareness is empowerment” viewpoint.  This is about public policy directed at the population using the power of tax dollars that support education. As President, he really put the brakes on family planning and sex education, not only in public schools in the US, but throughout the US sphere of inlfuence internationally as well. 

The power of the state, through tax supported agencies administering policy, was put behind an essentially Puritan religious doctrine:  people suffer in life from the ill effects of poverty because they deserve to.  The larger population should not help them unless to convert them religiously because salvation is the only proper path.  Suffering is good for the soul.

We have had enough time for this to play out that we see effects (really cruel effects) on not just one, but two generations (three if you count the recent grand-progeny of unwed mothers from Texas in the mid-nineties.)  A lot of people who support policies such as AO are not being religious, but selfish.  They simply want the money for something they would rather have for themselves (tax cuts for the rich, subsidies for big agriculture, etc.)  For a while, an unholy coalition between those who were persuaded by a Puritanical religious feeling and those who were using that feeling in pursuit of higher profit, was strong enough to force these policies.  Now it seems to have fallen apart for the time being.  But this is a classic human paradox.

Those who have the greatest ability to move government for their purposes tend to steer the great vehicle of power towards their ends, those with the least ability tend to get caught under the wheels. 

Where does the championship come from for those who are likely to become victimized?  The whole thing depends on enlightened voters who choose enlightened leaders who enact policies that mitigate the damage done by those selfish enough to not care if they inflict cruelty on others.

This begins with awareness about issues like teenage pregnancy and observable trends in causation that might be linked to public policy.

Sometimes these things take a long time to work themselves out, as public education tends to require victims.

Shenonymous:
“The fallacy is to judge the entire population of ‘poverty stricken young’ by one Rosarita. ...”

Yes—for heaven’s sake let’s not introduce any phenomena from the alleged real world into this discussion, when we have so many slogans and other bits of received wisdom to guide us.

My remark about the dumb ox driven by a sharp stick was a sarcastic characterization of bourgeois attitudes toward the poor which are being echoed here, for example, that the poor lack agency and are incapable of understanding or pursuing their interests.

The fallacy is to judge the entire population of ‘poverty stricken young’ by one Rosarita.  While abstinence has effect for white females, for poorer African-American and Latina women the rates remain high and are at greater risk from coercive sexual assaults, unplanned pregnancies and less effective access to contraception.  The edging upward number of unintended pregnancies have been largest for those teens with the least resources.

So the question about the effectiveness of sex education on the poor is pretty much banal given in general ‘the poor’ are are the ones less educated.  If they are lucky enough to get educated then they get the same sex education as the other ‘not poor’ children and of those that are educated research shows they have less unwanted pregnancies, abortions, and hence fewer births.  Also it depends on which culture you are asking about as the statistics are different.  Sounding strangely like a bigoted remark, I’d say the only sharp stick that guides ‘the collective dumb ox poor’ is the one used by those that exploit them which fastens them to the ground and then six feet under it.

It is way too early to either be an optimist or a pessimist regarding whether the Obama Administration approach to education succeeds better than the Bush Administration approach.  However, Obama has already dropped abstinence-only, which is a step forward.  This was proven to be pretty awful in its consequences.

It will take probably five or six years for anything Arne Duncan (Secy of Ed) and Obama can do, with the help of a Democratic congress, for it to be observed having any sort of impact. 

Given all of the pigeons coming home to roost from the Bush years, it may take a while for educational reform to begin to take shape.  It this point, putting legislative reform on the drawing board and figuring out how to get it through the process is where it may be at.

I guess one of the things that provokes me in both the article and many of the messages that follow it is that they seem to be framed in a belief that things are getting better and better, and that all we have to do is reach the poverty-striken young and they, too, can in effect become yuppies, blessed by our progressive middle-class laying on of hands.

I fully agree that the educational system should give students a full and thorough treatment of sex, if only to carry out their task in a morally respectable way.  Unfortunately, this is not likely to happen unless a number of major religions can be extirpated. 

However, I don’t see why this education will make a lot of difference to the birth rate.  No one offered my neighbor Rosita a better way to live than being a welfare mother, regardless of what they told her about sex in school.  Meanwhile, the larger economic world around her is collapsing and millions of people who deferred the pleasures of having children (evidently some people do regard having children as a pleasure) and dutifully went to school are now jobless, and perhaps homeless.  Things are not getting better, and given that the Obama administration is repeating the failed economic strategies of the Bush administration, we should expect them to get worse.

So I’m wondering about what we’re going to reach the Rositas of our community with.  I don’t see that we’ve got much to offer except, of course, the truth, and as noted above the faith-based are implacably opposed to telling children the truth.

Poverty is a big part of the issue.  Most people who have never been around serious and profound areas where there is true poverty have no idea.  It isn’t just about not being able to afford a trip to the shopping mall or a night on the town.

Poverty is a hall of mirrors in which one’s soul is trapped in a great negative undertow that leads to a lifetime of drowning in hopelessness.  A sense of no future and a desert landscape echoing “what’s the use?” from every direction. It eats into self esteem and confidence until, very quickly, there isn’t any left. The only satisfactions that can be anticipated are whatever immediate happiness can be found.  One anticipates being dead soon, even at a young age.

When the mind is numbed by this drowning, information about better ways to live that might come in the form of movies or people attempting to promote the future have the sound of cow-like bleatings of abject stupidity from know-it-all morons.  The problem is, this might be the correct perception, according to circumstances.  Well meaning people who are clueless tend to come off that way.

However, the best way teenage kids, who may live in just horrendous circumstances, can be reached is through the schools.  This puts good teachers who get it, on the front lines and in many cases, without a lot of backup.

Positive sex education that gives kids empowerment and a sense that maybe a future is possible after all, is a slim enough thread.  But the consequences of teenagers in poverty adding to teen pregnancy statistics are profound and only add to the mean undertow for another generation trapped in the cycle.

Given the general level of today’s literacy among high school kids, the whole educational paradigm needs an overhaul.  The entire situation is a crisis that should receive as much serious attention as the Wall Street financial meltdown.
The consequences of losing a whole generation ought to be mobilizing.  One could say that teenage pregnancy is really just a symptom.

Shenonymous:
’... Although abstinence may not be a bad word, certainly, abstinence-only does not address the problem and it is pure folly to think that a change of mind can take place in a country as large and diverse as is America. ...’

In that case, though, more complete sex education won’t make any difference either.  Well, I suppose I agree: the main forces affecting whether teenagers get pregnant or not are probably not educational.

I’d be interested in some pointers to data about the effectiveness of sex education on the poor, however.  We attribute intelligence and will to ourselves, but the poor are often supposed to be a sort of collective dumb ox easily guided with a sharp stick.

StuartH’s comment is the most cogent on this forum.  Anarcissie’s comment is unaffectedly simple, “to lead to a lively interest in avoiding pregnancy by whatever means, whether or not the government provided sex education or contraceptives.”  The scope of the problem is not only the size of the governed population, but ethnic mores and economic opportunity.  Jim Yell also sees the problem clearly.  Religious education is ineffectual since the clerics vividly show their hypocrisy themselves.  Everyone has been a teenager!  It is not surprising that teenagers are rebellious and want to experience the world and come to their own conclusions.  It is encouraged everywhere except for sex!  It is a myopic and sexually retarded society that does that.  This is not a problem of the shortsighted federal government.  It is a problem of social morals of a society that does not teach the full-range of dangers of giving life. 

...sure makes it look as though, by comparison, the 1970s were an era of wholesomeness…They weren’t.

It wasn’t in the 70s nor at any time in history!  The deficiency in morality has been a malaise since man and his penis populated the earth. 

social conservatives—fed up with sex, drugs, rock ’n’ roll, divorce, Roe v. Wade, women surging into the work force and who knows what else—began organizing politically to stamp out all this threatening change.  Also not true…They were not fed up with those vices, they were fed up that they did not have political control of the country.  These are hot button items and clever as they are, they solicited the use of these concerns just as pimps use prostitutes.

Sex is the biggest thing being advertised.  Especially sex enhancement drugs for men. One would think the entire population of men are impotent (well maybe they are???) as every 11 minutes there is a commercial for a drug to make men virile.  Problem is that the drugs might make their penises harder longer, but it does not make their minds virile.  They are still mentally as impotent as ever.

But eventually they did succeed in imposing their prescription—abstinence-only sex education that studies have repeatedly shown doesn’t work—on the one group of sexually active people most in need of hard information and least likely to respond to harangues: teenagers.  This is not true either.  Having worked many years in high schools before moving into higher academia, the curriculum was not abstinence-only sex education.  Schools teach the vagaries of the vagina!  The vicissitudes of promiscuous sex.  STD diseases for both sexes and loss of self esteem for women who have been exploited by the males of the planet since the cave onward.  While abstinence is important because it gives females more power over their own bodies, contraceptives are more important since the sex drive is not quenchable and when it kicks in, it is there!  Try teaching a teenage boy to not fling his penis! or a young girl to spread her legs!  How many mothers and fathers attempt to do that?  And teenagers’ eyes glaze over at religious moralizing. 

The reason teenage birth and pregnancy rates, which dropped dramatically between 1991 and 2005 was not because of any conservative effort in sex education in the schools, but because the median income rose, and the number children living in poverty diminished. See http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A51337-2005Apr13.html

According to this report, there was more opportunity for teens and others to improve their economic situation through employment,” and government initiatives such as job training, tax credits and health care helped lift some families out of poverty during the period.

Continued from above…

Furthermore, from the Feminist Law Professors report http://feministlawprofs.law.sc.edu/?p=4249
abortions fell during that period, and commentators of the right (abstinence promotion) and the left (contraception) competed to claim credit. “The results are now in. John Santelli, in the American Journal of Public Health, reported that 86% of the drop in teen pregnancies were the result of more effective contraception; 14% from greater abstinence. Moreover, the success rates in different groups came from different sources. For whites, pregnancies, abortions and births all dropped. Greater abstinence clearly played a role. For African-American, the most at-risk young mothers, and Latina women, however, abortion rates remained high, and a number of studies, including those by the Guttmacher Institute, confirm that poorer women are at greater risk from coercive sexual encounters, unplanned pregnancies, and less effective access to contraception. Moreover, the results vary regionally. A New York Times editorial in January of 2008 emphasized that “[a]lmost two-thirds of the decline in the total number of abortions can be traced to eight jurisdictions with few or no abortion restrictions —. . . places . . . that have shown a commitment to real sex education. . . . These jurisdictions also help women avoid unintended pregnancies by making contraception widely available.”

Comprehensive sex education that provides support for abstinence and contraception produces the greatest declines in pregnancies and abortions, and school-based efforts have the biggest payoff for poor teens who studies find are the most likely to lack information from other sources.

It is one thing to make an worthy news essay, and another to provide all the facts!  While Cocco’s article is important it does not portray truthfully sex education in the schools. 

Although abstinence may not be a bad word, certainly, abstinence-only does not address the problem and it is pure folly to think that a change of mind can take place in a country as large and diverse as is America.  Teenagers will experiment with sex because the society not only engages in promiscuous sex, it encourages it and the males of the society cannot control their zippers nor teach their sons to do so.

StuartH:
’... The argument should not be about how wise teenagers can be on their own, but what sort of better resources can be put into place that can help them achieve a better potential. ...’

Policies are going to be formulated and implemented with random effects, some of them probably fairly destructive, unless those who make them look at things as they are and give up the use of clichés and moralisms.  For instance, while Rosita’s life choices were stupid, they were hardly tragic.  Rosita lives in a stupid world which often requires stupid strategies.  If one wants some different result, one has to change that world, which is going to involve a lot more than changing the preachments of the educational system—although there a little honesty about reproductive matters, including contraception and abortion, would probably not do any harm.

There are probably enough sociological studies of teenage pregnancy to measure in metric tons.  There’s quite a lot of experience at the community level as well.  One can write all kinds of magazine and newspaper pieces and produce stories for the media, but many people have their ears shut and blinders on.

Why is this an issue?  It is because of a chain of events.  Each story of each girl who discovers she is pregnant and then suffers a consequent tragedy that affects the next generation adds to a societal impact, which is then measured in terms of local and non-local tax dollars and less tangible damage to communities. In the aggregate, it is also a measure of how much strain nuclear families are under in our cities.  Where you have more rural, traditional networks of extended family support, as in immigrant families, you see the issue less in crisis terms.

Where you see girls having to drop out of school to raise a child with little help from a broken family, which may in turn have been the result of a broken family support system, you see a variety of impacts perpetuated.  With a reduced potential from lack of education, there is a reduced potential to support the next generation, which may in turn, suffer the consequences.  With this, you see communities affected by reduced economic potential overall.  You see more people depending on the Federal and State welfare systems.  That’s what statistics are all about, which many people don’t see meaning in or would rather argue over instead of doing something.

The argument should not be about how wise teenagers can be on their own, but what sort of better resources can be put into place that can help them achieve a better potential. 

The larger question is whether or not the intelligent kids of tomorrow will be Americans or kids from India, Malaysia or China.  A “head in the sand” approach won’t get America where it needs to be in the 21st Century.

Well, the notion that the people are incompetent certainly goes along with the notion that pregnancy among teen-agers is due to the failure of the Federal government to propagandize them enough, or in the right way.  However, it does not comport with my own direct observation of poor people.

For example:  I lived in a small suburban slum for several years.  Among my immediate neighbors were an extended family of (mostly) Puerto Ricans.  One of them was “Rosita”.  When I met her I guess she was 10 or 11.  In due course she attained puberty, became reasonably attractive, and got a job at McDonald’s.  I used to ask myself what I could do for her to avert the inevitable, which of course was unmarried pregnancy and a new job as welfare recipient like her mother and her grandmother.  I could not think of a thing.  If she stayed in school, I suppose she might have worked her way up to a mind-numbing 9-to-5 in a fluorescent cubicle in some financial ziggurat, or rather, a succession of them as she got laid off every few years, for enough pay to rent a closet or a dog house.  A totally empty life—whereas by becoming a Welfare Mother she had a child, a future, an assured place in the rich context of her society, and maybe even a hold on the child’s father (although I doubt it).  Her choice, given her circumstances, was perfectly rational.

Remember all the excitement about those girls who agreed to get pregnant together and help each other out?  Assuming they wanted to have children in the first place, that would have been rational, too, if it hadn’t been an urban legend.

Several years ago I read a scientific study which showed that it was generally more advantageous for poor women who were going to have children to do so as early as possible.  The main reason was that the younger they were, the more likely they would be to have relatives and friends they could call upon for assistance and support.

Given my observations and what I hear reported, it seems to me that the psychology and sociology of teen pregnancy needs to be filled out.  Not everyone is destined by birth and circumstances to be a soccer mom or a breaker of glass ceilings.  Maybe the girls are talking to one another, and drawing perfectly reasonable conclusions which we don’t happen to like.  We’ll never know until we drop our articles of faith and do a little science.

StuartH:
’... Many of them represent a second generation and a terrible perpetuation of a poverty as strict as an iron barred jail.  Many of these teems seem to either not be aware that this might be the result of unprotected sex or to see it as the will of God - not a consequence of immature and unguided thinking.  Guidance on the subject seemed missing.  Amazingly, parents allowing them to go camping together or celebrate “going steady” anniversaries in hotels pop up as enablers in some stories.
...  Most of those involved are unprepared to handle what follows and many girls wind up handling it alone.  Your heart just breaks as they describe Dickens like circumstances they must endure. ...’

It seems to me we’re not understanding the sociology or psychology here.  One would expect these bad outcomes to be communicated socially and to lead to a lively interest in avoiding pregnancy by whatever means, whether or not the government provided sex education or contraceptives.

It happens that I just finished a gig reading and scoring high school essays - in the neighborhood of 10,000 of them.

These are protected by confidentiality so the emphasis is on scoring the English and providing feedback to students and schools on that.  However, it would be good if someone could figure out how to publish some of these essays.  There were a variety of subjects that students chose to write about, but a steady percentage of them reflect on the experience of becoming a pregnant teenage girl. A shocking percentage.

There is no comparison between the statistics or the general arguments and actual writing based on these mostly heartbreaking experiences; some in good prose, but mostly in awkward, somewhat-ineffective-though-sincere English like a letter written from a breaking heart. 

Many of them represent a second generation and a terrible perpetuation of a poverty as strict as an iron barred jail.  Many of these teems seem to either not be aware that this might be the result of unprotected sex or to see it as the will of God - not a consequence of immature and unguided thinking.  Guidance on the subject seemed missing.  Amazingly, parents allowing them to go camping together or celebrate “going steady” anniversaries in hotels pop up as enablers in some stories.

After I had read probably hundreds of these stories, I wanted to propose that the new “morning after” pill be made available in candy machines in school hallways.  Something. It made me feel angry that this could go on and still there were people not able to see the reality behind the statistics.

There are a few in which the girl and the boy join with the parents in creating a happy ending by becoming committed to working it through.  But they seem to be lucky exceptions.  Most of those involved are unprepared to handle what follows and many girls wind up handling it alone.  Your heart just breaks as they describe Dickens like circumstances they must endure. 

The abstinence only policy that Bush brought in and emphasized as Governor of Texas and as President is causing huge damage to many lives, to society, to the economy and will continue to, as another Katrina, for years to come. 

A great publishing project for somebody would be to collect these sorts of stories from teenage mothers and edit them into a volume or a series of volumes.  Clarity needs to enter the public debate through an understanding of the pain people really have to suffer as a consequence of policies with harsh consequences.

If they do not use condoms may be they will become sterile from all the nasty little STD’s,Thus being unable to reproduce this closed minded false “GOD”-mongering any longer. I can not believe I just said that. Oooops…...

Sure abstinence only works, just ask Bristol Palin.

Alice:
‘Abstinence isn’t the “bad” word that today’s culture makes it out to be. It’s actually the exact opposite – it’s a positive choice that teens can make to ensure a brighter and healthier future. ...’

Abstaining from one thing or another may be a good life strategy under some circumstances, but it doesn’t ensure anything.

But, anyway, decisions of individuals about their own lives aren’t the question here; the question is about educational strategy.  Omitting important information and lying, religious-fanatic style, are probably not good strategies for the education part, although they may be politically popular.

I had a suicidal teenager mother (aged 15) who was a graduate of Abstainance Only. I don’t hate conservatives because I disagree with them; that would be pure egoism. I hate them for the tremendous hurt and harm they cause in their limitless ignorance, stupidity and meanspiritedness.

I imagine the greater the distance from educator to educatee, the more important ideology becomes in the education transmitted.  When the educator is the Federal government we should expect to see nationally-mandated silliness, like the promotion of abstinence-only birth control.  But does anything they are officially taught in school affect the way teen-agers think?