Via Phil Plait of the (well, except for this I guess) entirely non-sex Bad Astronomy on the latest debunking study about “abstinence only” sex education.
“Taking a [virginity] pledge doesn’t seem to make any difference at all in any sexual behavior,” said Janet E. Rosenbaum of the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health, whose report appears in the January issue of the journal Pediatrics. “But it does seem to make a difference in condom use and other forms of birth control that is quite striking.”
Lots of people have remarked on this study — for the most part limiting themselves to predictable, progressive forehead thumping and “duh”-ing that there should ever be any question. And to be honest my own forehead’s a bit sore… though the keyboard marks are already starting to fade.
What I haven’t seen pointed out so far, an even more damning indictment of abstinence-only education, is that they can’t fall back on educational-incompetence dodge (a.k.a. “abstinence-only education can’t be wrong, it can only taught wrong.“) Because, not to put too fine a point on it, they’re hitting all their other objectives! However unhelpful or actively counterproductive it might be to their actual health or well-being students who go as far as taking the approved “abstinence pledges” are “correctly” skeptical of condoms. They’re about 10% less likely to use them than matched peers who didn’t drink the abstinence-only Kool Aid…
... but no less likely to not have sex period.
Conclusion? It ain’t how they’re teaching it that’s leading to failure of students to actually be abstinent: for better or worse they’re teaching everything else they teach just fine. It’s just that, evidently, even using the best methodology money ($175 million just last year!) can buy you just can’t teach people to abstain from sex.
