A decision by a Department of Education task force earlier this week confirmed what some of us have suspected for some time: Schools in Mississippi really don't have any legal way to teach comprehensive sex-education. A recent law gives school districts a choice between abstinence-only and "abstinence-plus" sex education in theory; in reality, they're just different names for the same policy.
Right now, the list of approved abstinence-plus curricula includes only two options—the same options that are on the list of abstinence-only curricula.
While it's important to teach children how to respond to peer pressure, to set boundaries and to foster healthy relationships, Mississippi's deplorably high rates of teen pregnancy and sexually transmitted diseases suggest that our students could benefit from knowing about birth control and condoms as well.
The statistics demonstrate that students are not abstaining from sex before marriage, and another class in school isn't likely to change that. A 2009 study by the state Department of Health showed that 76 percent of public high-school seniors have had sex. Of the students who had sex within the three months before the survey, only 66 percent used a condom. Mississippi also leads the nation in teen pregnancy, chlamydia and gonorrhea.
These problems are too severe to solve with a couple of programs that adhere to the narrowest interpretation of a badly written law, and parents know it. A recent survey by the Women's Fund of Mississippi found that 96 percent of parents think children should be taught the benefits of abstinence. That doesn't mean they should learn only about abstinence, though; 90 percent supported teaching students about birth-control methods.
Teaching students about safe sex doesn't mean that they will immediately run off and have sex, but because most people do have sex at some point in their lives, they should know how to be responsible and safe when they do. Even if, as the two approved programs suggest, every student in our state waits until marriage to have sex, they would still benefit from having the information they need as they decide if and how to use contraceptives within marriage.
School districts must implement sex-education programs next year, but right now they have only two state-approved options, neither of which is thorough. Neither comes with the federal grant money available to schools with comprehensive sex education programs, either, making Mississippi's current sex-education policy neither fiscally responsible or local-government friendly.
The law has left school districts that want to teach comprehensive sex education with no viable options. Armed with little factual information, and left to their own devices, it's likely that students will look elsewhere to learn about sexuality, just as they've done all along.
Next time around, officials must make sure districts can teach programs that are-evidence based, rather than keeping safe-sex information from teens.
Legacy Comments
Again, Mississippi has been failed by a law making body that was duly elected by a citizenry that has for far too long made their votes based strictly on ideology and not critical thought about solutions. The electorate must change here in MS. This abstinence only sex ed law is another pitiful attempt to evoke “Mississippi values” into a problem rather than solving the problem. From unwanted teen pregnancies to STD’s, it should be obvious that MS teens need the most comprehensive sex ed available, replete with information about choices, healthy relationships, anatomy and physiology, reproductive heath, and contraception. But, the legislature is full of right wing ideologues who legislate for the benefit of an elite few at the behest of an ill informed electorate. Critical thinking must be taught more in the churches where over 90% of Mississippians claim allegiance. Yet, too many of these churches are simply conduits for elitist American exceptionalism, classism and consumerism rather than the centers of critical thought with the voiceless and powerless as a center of consciousness. The churches reinforce the status quo of residential segregation and market fundamentalism rather than counter -cultural prophetic advocacy for the “Samaritans” of our communities. This is troubling for Mississippi because far too many of the very people that keep voting these conservative Republicans in are actually who would be considered the “Samaritans” of our communities. Mississippi is the poorest, most African American, sickest, and ill-educated state in the Union. Yet, the political leadership of this state develops laws and policies that serve such a population the least. Mississippi is also the most religious state in the Union, so there is ample opportunity to engage citizens with critical though grounded in the teachings of Jesus Christ. Yet, what we would find in most churches in Mississippi is a disappointing message of prosperity and/or classism. The revolutionary Gospel message has been changed to a message of stark militarism, materialism, simple charity (without systemic change) and individual self-righteousness. Couple that with some of the more influential Churches’ almost synonymous allegiance to moneyed elites in many instances and you have the social capital to force conservative, plutocratic political-economic ideology on people marketed as Christian (Mississippi) values. American churches must wake up and claim the space of prophetic advocacy that its counterparts in South America and Africa are occupying as a voice for the voiceless and therefore giving hope to the hopeless in its strivings for true peace and justice.
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