IGNORANCE MAY BE BLISS

You've seen the situation before. You meet up with an old friend and start
talking about things you used to do. Things you had in common. Things from
the good old days. And then she breaks it to you: she's pregnant. Or he's
gotten a girl pregnant.

The conversation shifts to family, life, a different future, and you feel
kind of funny inside. Do they want sympathy? Congratulations? Help? Soon
enough the ambiguity becomes more than you can bear, and you find yourself
running late to class. You part ways and think. What happened? Why him? Why
her? Why didn't the person just wait to have sex until married?

Lots of people would change that last sentence to why didn't the person
just use a condom? Maybe the person did use a condom and it broke. Maybe
she was on the pill but forgot to take it. Maybe the rhythm was broken.
Maybe no one ever told them they should wait.

Our schools and our society are giving entirely the wrong message to our
children. We aren't teaching them to not have sex, we are teaching them
"safe" ways to have sex. We are sending our children into the world,
charged with hormones and inundated with sex from music and television, and
we just assume from the get-go that they will not be able to handle it. We
give out condoms and pamphlets and half-hour informational videos on STDs
to kids and assume they will make responsible choices.

But why are we stooping to the lowest common denominator? Why not encourage
no sex at all?

All through my school education, I was taught that drugs were bad. "DARE to
keep kids off drugs," said the shirt I got in the sixth grade. "Drugs are a
dead end," Bill Cosby told me after school during the commercial breaks for
Duck Tales. But kids do drugs all the time. At my high school there were
lots of kids who did pot, smoked and drank, even though all three things
were bad for you according to pamphlets and speeches from motivational
speakers during all-school pep rallies.

Everything around us told us not to do drugs, because they were bad. But
when we talked about sex, the message was, "It's dangerous and harmful, so
do it responsibly."

Some people say we should encourage abstinence but provide condoms and
teach kids how to use them properly anyway. Sort of a back-up plan in case
the whole abstinence thing doesn't work out. So why not use the same logic
with drugs? Why not pass out sterilized needles to curious tenth-graders
because we know they might want to try drugs sometime? If they're going to
do it, they might as well be safe. Of course, we'll tell them drugs are
bad, but ultimately it's a choice they must make for themselves, so we
should be teaching them how to do it right. We need to start showing our
children just how much cocaine to snort, how to properly inject heroin, and
how much weed they need to smoke to get high. We could even have them make
bongs in art class.

And yet we don't. Our schools have a unilateral abstinence-only drug
program. Is it working? Maybe. We haven't given up, though, because if we
even hinted it was OK to do drugs (by teaching safe and effective drug
control), kids would be on them faster than you could say diaphragm.

Why not hold our kids to the same higher standard? Because they'll just do
it anyway, so we should have taught them how to do it right? Give me a
break. If we're going to promote condom use instead of abstinence, we might
as well roll out Nature episodes and have kids watch 'em in health class.
"See those water buffalo, kids? They run around humping each other all the
time. They can't control themselves! Just like you! Now take these condoms
and have fun, but remember to be safe." By promoting safe sex we're telling
our kids they're no better than animals. Except animals don't wear pants
that get in the way.

Why not hold them to that higher standard? We do it all the time with
school, work and sports. We always expect the best out of them and
encourage them to never give up, set their minds to it, accomplish their
goals and all sorts of other bite-sized nuggets of wisdom. In every area of
life we encourage our kids to have discipline and tenacity, except when it
comes to having sex. We assume the worst, and don't even bother to
encourage students to save it for marriage.

We start out by assuming they won't be able to succeed at remaining
abstinent without even giving them the benefit of the doubt.

So what about the kids who fail? Those who go through high school and try
real hard to remain abstinent, but darn it, Simon Ringsmuth's "keep your
damn pants on" method just didn't work for them? The ones who try real hard
but just can't control themselves? They have to deal with the consequences
of their own actions.

Abstinence education teaches about the hazards, dangers and risks of having
sex. But those who want it bad enough will get condoms and go do it - same
as the current system of sex education. It's a personal choice and our
schools can't decide for anyone. But we can give kids hope, dignity and
some amount of self-respect by telling them about abstinence.

If our kids aren't being abstinent, it's because we've taught them it's
impossible. We have to stop taking the cop-out way when it comes to sex
education and start doing it the right way.