Health Innoculation Is Now Stealth Indoctrination

Health and Life Skills classes will no longer be taught as stand-alone subjects at Granada Hills Charter High School. Instead the required "health concepts" (meaning, nutrition, suicide prevention, body systems,and sex education) will be incorporated into Physical Education.

I'm not a parent of a child attending GHCHS so my input is completely irrelevant to the decision makers. And I really hope to establish relationships with the PE teachers who are now going to be saddled with teaching sex ed. But I can't help but wonder...

State Law requires a "comprehensive" sex education program be taught. That means the students have to receive information on reproduction, pregnancy prevention, sexually transmitted diseases, sexual harassment and safe surrender laws. It's hard to imagine PE teachers choosing to become fully informed about this complex material so they can teach it effectively, when it would be much easier to call the local clinic to schedule a presentation.

If I were a GHCHS PE teacher, that's what I would do. Hand out pills, shots, cream, foam and condoms today... your shoulder pads will be here tomorrow.

Unlike most LAUSD schools in the San Fernando Valley, GHCHS has had very low pregnancy and infection rate. Since 1998 has been the ONLY public school in our community where every student saw a Positively Waiting presentation as a part of their Health class. All four of the Health teachers made sure their students heard as much about Risk-ELIMINATION as Risk-REDUCTION. Years of the PW message on campus has provided positive peer-pressure for students to practice sexual self-control.

Will PE teachers, now required to disseminate mountains of complex, politically-charged material, in addition to their own course requirements, be as concerned about teaching both sides? I honestly don't know. I hope so.

Oh, and in case you're wondering what will take the place of a 20-week class focusing on the importance of making informed health decisions --- and the lifelong consequences of failing to do so --- students will now be encouraged to take a year-long course in Geography as an "enrichment elective."

The year-long class meets a college requirement... and coincidentally, provides 40 weeks of instruction on diversity, class warfare, gender-issues and of course, climate change.

I'm not kidding.

If You Don't Tell Them, Who Will?

Today I received the first of what I expect will be many heartbreaking phone calls. A teacher in LAUSD has been preparing her students to hear my story, and found out today that I'm not allowed to tell it in her school anymore.

As we talked, she echoed every conversation we have had at Positively Waiting. What about...? A taped presentation? Getting in with the clinic speakers? Webcasting?

The hurt and urgency in her voice squeezed my heart. Both of us are thinking, "what about THESE kids?" They will get only the one view (Be safe, use "protection.") Who will tell them they're worth waiting for? Who will tell them there are BENEFITS to learning how to control those powerful impulses?

The teacher assured me she will do her best, but pointed out, "They listen to you because you've been there."

I'm not giving up. I'm looking for ways to smuggle the truth in underground. But I'm dreading every one of those phone calls this Fall.

Really BAD Abstinence Ed.

I was reminded today of the two contestants on American Idol who "promoted" abstinence education. One was a middle aged man who sang a song called "No Sex!" and the other was a high school student who wanted Simon Cowell to know it would "just be better" if he waited for sex until marriage. They, like the Church Lady from Saturday Night Live and the "coach" at the beginning of Mean Girls, give abstinence a bad name. We do look utterly foolish when we pretend sex is bad, dirty or evil.

The American Idol contestants represent just two of several forms of really bad abstinence education. Here are some others:

1. Data Dumping: Scary statistics, graphic pictures of diseased genitals and study after depressing study on the negative consequences of non-marital sexual activity. It does produce a fairly impressive eeyewuuww! factor, but information doesn't change behavior.
2. The Sleeping Beauty Method: extreme censorship of any and all material which might inspire a sexual thought. This is a favorite of churched families, generally based on the wrong belief that preventing ALL exposure to the sex-saturated culture as a young person will somehow keep them from wanting to have sex. It makes mom and dad feel good, but leaves the child totally unprepared from the onslaught of emotions and desire they have when they step outside the cocoon.
3. Lowering the Bar: changing the standard to something other than wait for marriage, most often, "wait until you're ready/older/in a committed relationship." This are vague and unspecific targets which have broad interpretations. An adult's interpretation of the "commitment" stage is very different from a 14-year old's.
   

NONE of these strategies work.

I know this for a fact, because we tried them and failed. We found out the hard way that fear only works as long as the fear lasts. Its great when they're 5, but really ineffective at 15. When we finally set aside our pride, and really asked what works? what impacts your attitudes toward sex? Teens gave us the answers.

More next time...

LAUSD and Me

From 1998 until December of 2006, my husband and I talked to teens in LA Unified Schools (mostly in the San Fernando Valley). A frank talk about living with the consequences of sex really impacted their perspective about sex, about "safe sex" and about not "doing it."

BUT... in December of 2006, LAUSD made us stop. They were worried about "discrimination" and "medical accuracy." OK. We worked the system. Lots of legal hoop jumping, delays, written proposals and more delays... In the end, they have decided:

1) We are not qualified to tell our own story
2) While the whole point of our story is that "safe sex" failed us, in order to come back to LAUSD schools, we would have to include tell students there are "other FDA approved methods for preventing pregnancy and contracting STDS" [Note: That means we have to encourage them to use condoms.]

The absurdity is the FDA and the CDC will only say "Condoms are not 100% safe, but if used properly, will reduce the risk of sexually transmitted diseases."

REDUCE the risk???!! By how much? The rates vary depending on the disease, whose infected and what type of sexual activity they're engaging in...

(You didn't really believe a condom gave you 100% protection, did you?)

So, back to LAUSD... if we agree to tell students something we KNOW experientially didn't work for us, and we can PROVE scientifically won't work for THEM, the district will allow us to talk to the students... oh wait, I forgot. We aren't qualified to tell our own story.