I’ve always thought trying to push for abstinence-based sex education is like trying to put a genie back in a bottle. Young people don’t listen to being “told” what to do. However, they do respond to being given facts, treated like adults, and being given the opportunity to make decisions based on these facts.

I agree that abstinence, as a concept, is often the best course of action. However, it’s not because sex is wrong or dirty. It’s because often young people’s reasons for choosing to have sex are based on other, outside influences. Encouraging discussions about what having sex means, exploding myths about what boys and girls think about people who do/don’t have sex – these are all far more important than simply saying “Hey kids, why don’t you wait for someone you REALLY love?”

Personally, I think it’s the relationships education which is lacking in the UK at the moment, not the technical stuff.

I don’t understand. It says 2007 on the report

Since Nadine Dorries isn’t arguing for abstinence only education (according to this site – I’m not desperately keen on chasing down more of what she has to say) I don’t see how this would be a lesson for her in particular.

She’s arguing for abstinence to be taught in addition to regular sex education.
https://liberalconspiracy.org/2011/05/04/what-is-nadine-dorries-mp-proposing-exactly/

Evidence, Dorries …… Dorries, evidence – oh, it’s so difficult to know who to trust? Maybe this performance will help the undecided choose who is right and who is proposing a right wing christian fundamentalist view of society.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7VJ4SQFNPWs

You have to listen carefully, though – sometimes the communal sniggering obliterates the propaganda, sorry I meant points, being made.

[3] “She’s arguing for abstinence to be taught in addition to regular sex education” – I think it’s much more than that.

Dorries has a problem with today’s sexual mores – in other words she is working toward a certain sort of cultural milieu so fights sexual wars on several fronts.
In essence Dorries is hoping to realise the sort of world Jimmy Dobson & his crew would be proud of.
http://www.rightwingwatch.org/content/focus-family

@Tim J

No, she’s arguing for abstinence to be taught as part of ordinary sex education.

It doesn’t take a genius to forsee the mixed messages it would give out to teens, if they were confronted with “So you shouldn’t have sex, you should wait. But if you want to, this is how to do it safely”. Which is why the idea of discussing “relationships” in the same forum as sex education seems a little odd to me – although the two are obviously linked in practice. One is an emotional concept which requires young people to feel empowered to be able to make a choice based on their own feelings, and their own readiness to move forward in a relationship, rather than what they feel is expected of them by other people. The other is a nuts and bolts practical lesson in what can happen when you have sex, how to prevent these things happening, and what to do if things go wrong.

The other problem with abstinence as a concept in our society is that, well… what are they supposed to wait FOR? Marriage? That’s not really a realistic expectation, is it?

@ 6

“It doesn’t take a genius to forsee the mixed messages it would give out to teens, if they were confronted with “So you shouldn’t have sex, you should wait. But if you want to, this is how to do it safely”.”

Is that’s what’s proposed, though? Or does she just want to make sure abstienance is included as one of your options in sex ed? (If so, I admit it’s redundant, as I can’t imagine a sex ed class not allowing for the possibility of people not having sex. But the politicians are always demanding things that already take place.)

It’s instructive to read here in Wikipedia how other countries and cultures have responded to the need to introduce sex education into school curriculums:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sex_education

Judging by the unusually the high teen pregnancy rate in Britain, other west European countries have evidently made a better job of it. Could it be that we might learn something useful from their experience?

Of course it does not work. But right wing nit wits like Dorries don’t care about that. What is important is pushing through social conservatism to piss off liberals. Facts don’t come into it.

As we have seen from Bachman in the US when she got it wrong about one of the founding fathers, and her supporters went on Wikipedia and changed the history so that a man suddenly became a founding father, facts don’t matter to conservatives.

Sex education on TV for teen girls in Japan:
http://www.youporn.com/watch/83726/tv-show-in-japan/

@9 And that’s before you even get into the truthiness filled page that is Conservapedia.

On the date thing, that’ll teach me to trust Ed Brayton with double checking, however as the ab-only programmes haven’t altered the evididence cited in the report still stands.

@6:

It doesn’t take a genius to for see the mixed messages it would give out to teens, if they were confronted with “So you shouldn’t have sex, you should wait. But if you want to, this is how to do it safely”.

It doesn’t take a genuis to…

a) look at the evidence, and

b) take a less patronising view of teenagers

And then figure out that what the evidence is actually saying is precisely the opposite of the position you’re trying to argue.

@7

Of course it abstinence is included in sex ed already. Otherwise, there would be a generation of young people who assume that sex is not a choice. But abstinence is given as an option, and not given precedence, as the focus of current SRE curriculum is to arm young people with the ability to make their own decisions regarding relationships, and how to explain those choices to other people.

The issue I have with Dorries et al, is that it all seems very short sighted, and the simplistic terms in which the concept is presented suggests to me that this very much is an attempt to get the “religious” agenda into the schools even more. Abstinence cannot be taught or offered as a stand alone concept – and I don’t think Dorries understands that. Sure, reinforce to young people the idea of waiting until you are ready, but how do you know if you are ready? To pro-actively promote abstinence, you have to arm young people with the means to say no to sex. But what if they don’t WANT to say no? So by pushing the abstinence agenda, you run the risk of adversely affecting those young people who are ready to have sex sooner rather than later. The idea of a teenage girl having sex being a slut is still common in today’s playground – even with a liberal approach to sex ed. We’ve got a long way to go to enlightenment and real sexual choice for young people, and including the word “abstinence” in a curriculum feels like a step backwards, for me at least. And I say that as someone who felt that abstinence WAS the right option for me when I was a teen.

@12

Granted, I worded that badly. But as someone who works with teenage girls, I’m not prone to patronising those whom I view as every bit as able as I am to make a decision about their lives, given the right information in a clear and unbiased fashion.

What I meant (and what I thought I made clear in other comments) is that the concept of abstinence needs to be taken into consideration away from the practical advice given on sex education – exactly the way it is done at the moment in schools. Hence why I think Dorries is a moron.

Appending sex education to teaching religion – which religion? – will be challenging in the light of this recent news report that a quarter of secondary schools in England aren’t teaching RE nowadays:

Schools breaking law by not teaching religious studies, poll finds

All under-16s must be taught RE, but a quarter of secondary schools in England are neglecting this statutory requirement
http://www.guardian.co.uk/education/2011/jun/24/schools-not-teaching-religious-studies

It seems these schools have rather anticipated the localism agenda.

I do have to say comprehensive sex ed deffinately is the key, I’ve encountered a startling amount of, well, complete ignorance of sexual health from those in their late teens/early twenties of late. Anecdotal it may be, but I was still astonished to meet a 22 year old man who thought that jonnys only stopped pregnancies, and didn’t know what STI’s were.

[16] soft tissue injuries?

@ 11

“And that’s before you even get into the truthiness filled page that is Conservapedia.”

Conservapedia is TRUSTWORTHY, Cylux. I know because I looked it up on Conservapedia.

On that note, did you know that Obama was going to be the first US President to be sworn in on the Koran, except then he wasn’t? Fascinating stuff, that website.

@ 13 Some Random Bint.

Agree entirely. Incidentally, “the focus of current SRE curriculum is to arm young people with the ability to make their own decisions regarding relationships, and how to explain those choices to other people” sums up my own sex ed perfectly, and yes, it was a very well-designed class.

I don’t think we need to change sex ed, at least not in a big way: it seems to be working well as it is. I’m just wary about claiming Dorries is trying to push abstinence until I see evidence for it. I wouldn’t be surprised if she was, but I wouldn’t want to make the accusation based on that alone.

Religion isn’t taught in state schools in France because of their secular tradition so it would be interesting to learn how they deal with sex education in schools and what effect that has had on the rate of teen pregnancies there.

@17 Sexually transmitted infections.

@18 Heh, it is a source for much unintended humour. Needless to say they are deadly serious. Which can be scary till you discover the first six terms of the top ten searches on conservapedia were all on homosexuality and related sexual practices…

Not convinced. The culture you live in is an ocean and its currents drag you powerfully.The idea that this can be measurably changed by a “course” wonderfully overestimates the infinitesimally tiny breath of wind it represents. Think of the reality of dragging Britain`s hordes of single mother`s into a half hour abstinence lecture?
The same is true of whatever relationship waffling / condom donating vagina dissecting science Unity would recommend.
What Bob B is, perhaps, hinting at is that the more socially conservative cultures of the continent may be more successful and comparing the global cultural environment does not bear out U’s implicit argument that social conservatism is bad and religion is awful
It would be interesting in this regard, to map the effect of taking people out of a strict Christian society and transporting them into a Liberal welfare society. Such a thing happened to the West Indian immigrants to this country who fared vastly better in the States becoming by-word for work ethic duty and restraint .

Interesting that..

@ 23 Paul Newman

Um, countries that teach comprehensive sex ed are more successful at preventing STIs and teen pregnancies than those that don’t. Look at us compared to the US , for example.

The rest of your post is just a load of lazy straw men and non-sequiturs. Who said that social conservatism is bad, that religion is awful, or that sex ed should consist of a single half-hour course? And what the hell does work ethic have to do with it?

We need proper sex ed in this country full stop. However nothing in government policy even hints at an effective evidence based policy, and seems to be far more about jerking off Christians/Muslims.

And frankly, they should be doing that in their free time not at work.

“it frequently fosters dangerous levels of ignorance in relation to very basic practices which are proven to reduce the risk of STI transmission”

Any other “very basic practices” you can think of which reduce STIs ?

“He also points out the role of cultural norms regarding issues such as multiple partners and the age of losing one’s virginity, with the substantially older age of first intercourse and lower number of partners among Indians and Pakistanis coinciding with low STI rates.”

Just took a quick browse at some HIV stats.

I see that Swedish and Norwegian rates are half the UK rate. All that excellent Nordic sex education ?

They’re also half the UK rate in Poland, not famed for their frank in-class discussions of the risks of barebacking. And half the UK rate in Pakistan and Bangladesh, which have a far poorer medical infrastructure. Same for Algeria, Egypt, Morocco, Tunisia. Is it that famous North African openness about sex ?

It’s half the UK level in China – a place so liberal that unmarried mothers are fined several years wages.

“it is illegal in almost every province for single women to have a child and that people who have children out of wedlock must pay “social compensation fees” (29 Feb. 2009, Sec.1.f). The US Congressional-Executive Commission on China (CECC) reports that those who give birth to a child outside of marriage can face fines six to eight times the amount of their income from the previous year (US 31 Oct. 2008, 97). According to a 2005 article in Reproductive Health, very few children are born out of wedlock in China (11 Aug. 2005, 3).”

About half the world preaches abstinence – mostly via the “don’t even talk about it, let alone do it” method which was so successful for the UK for 100 years of free schooling – until we learned better. Generally, that’s the half with the lowest STI rates.

@ 27 Laban

Well, if China actually fines people for getting pregnant then it’s a useless comparator. And I was under the impression that Scandinavian countries had comprehensive sex ed.

What about other factors that could affect HIV rates? Some countries outlaw homosexuality, which would obviously have an effect. Also bear in mind that AIDS is lethal, so countries that aren’t good at treating it would have lower rates due to many sufferers being dead.

Didn’t Finland see a big drop in unwanted pregnancies a decade or so after introducing comprehensive sex ed? A change in approach in one country would be a better indicator that cross-country comparisons due to there being presumably fewer other variables.

And half the UK rate in Pakistan and Bangladesh, which have a far poorer medical infrastructure.

Course you need the medical infrastructure to actually test for HIV…

For comparison, another report on sex education in other countries:
http://www.inca.org.uk/Sex_and_relationships_education_December_2009_.pdf

More about the source here:
http://www.inca.org.uk/

Why is this report dated 2011 if the original report was 2007?

And anyway, Duuurrr, of course abstinence education doesn’t work – has it ever?

@ 8

“Judging by the unusually the high teen pregnancy rate in Britain, other west European countries have evidently made a better job of it. Could it be that we might learn something useful from their experience?”

Now you’re being silly. Everyone knows that you shouldn’t bother looking at eveidence – just act out your prejudices and copy America. Uncle Sam always knows best on everythingh from healthcare to welfare.