2008 Woodie Awards
This summer, I’m living and working in China, a country equally renowned for its impressive history and its lack of free speech. Yet one thing is particularly striking to me. Despite its rigid control of the press, its advanced internet filtering systems, and alarming censoring of political criticism, China is surging ahead of the United States in its willingness to freely offer sex education. Just a decade ago, sex education classes at Chinese schools were a rarity. Furthermore, the PRC did its best to keep a growing AIDS problem tightly under wraps. But in the past couple of years, things have changed dramatically. Sex education classes are now taught in many schools and universities throughout the country. Hotlines have been set up in dozens of Chinese cities for people to call if they have questions. Several localities have even opened up sex museums to keep the public informed (I plan to go to the one in Tongli tomorrow which focuses on “ancient” Chinese sex. The Chinese may not have the Kama Sutra, but they’ve been “doing it” for thousands of years as well).
But even more important than this new focus on sexual education is the sort of material that is actually being taught. Unlike the United States, China has increasingly embraced a more comprehensive form of sexual education that both includes information on the health risks of sexual activity and on how to use contraceptives like condoms. The economy isn’t the only area in which the United States could fall behind. Some might suggest that China’s “One-Child Policy” is at the root of all of this newfound appreciation for the importance of sex-ed. But even if this is true, both the United and China are trying to use sex education to solve the exact same social problems: STDs and teen pregnancy.
While China still has a long way to go, these recent signs are encouraging. Unfortunately, the same cannot be said about the United States. If China is progressing quickly, the US seems to be drifting backward. According to Planned Parenthood, more than a third of American high schools barely even discuss forms of birth control other than abstinence. Just this year, Congress passed a bill to spend $175 million on abstinence-only programs. Schools and teachers across the country are now not only being pressured by right wing radicals, but also by the federal, state, and local governments that they’ve hijacked. Nonetheless, the struggle over sex education in our schools isn’t merely about abstract values and beliefs, it’s about the lives of real people. Study after study has shown that abstinence pledges have little to no effect on when teenagers have sex. It isn’t a coincidence that the US has the highest teen pregnancy rate of any developed country in the world (yes, that includes “atheist” Europe). As the American Academy of Pediatrics noted just last week, “the evidence does not support abstinence-only interventions as the best way to keep young people from unintended pregnancy.” Right-wing nut jobs may like to rant about schools encouraging students to have sex young and often, but comprehensive sex education promotes nothing of sort. Like abstinence-only education it warns of the risks and dangers of sex (its hard to argue with the fact that the only foolproof method of avoiding pregnancy is by avoiding sex). Yet it recognizes that in the real world inhabited by everyone but the religious right, many teens will have sex regardless. Teens, then, should be given as much information as possible so they can make informed and safe decisions. This is a formula that China is increasingly getting right, and the United States is increasingly getting wrong.
But the consequences of abstinence-only policies extend far beyond the bounds of sex-education. They also threaten the First Amendment right of free speech. Advocates of abstinence-only sex education argue essentially that certain topics should not be allowed to be discussed in schools. Bizarrely, schools, which are traditionally places that have encouraged inquisitiveness, are now trying to ban it. At some schools, teachers are not even allowed to answer questions that fall outside of the scope of abstinence-only education programs (like those about how to use condoms). These rules aimed at preventing open discussion in the classroom give legitimacy to other government attempts to reign in free speech. While I try to avoid predicting the imminent demise of the American democratic system (American ideologues of one kind or another have been doing it since 1776), this is something to be concerned about. Conservative advocacy of abstinence-only education is strikingly similar to their attempts to pass a flag-burning amendment. In both cases, free discourse is restrained.
It’s ironic that in China, one of the world’s worst human rights abusers and limiters of free speech, sex may soon be more openly taught than in the United States. This is one area that we cannot afford to fall behind.
You can skip to the end and leave a response. Pinging is currently not allowed.
Just another WordPress weblog
RSS 2.0
