You're Teaching My Child What? Read Free Page B

convey the same message to kids: Right now, sexually transmitted diseases are out of control. We’ve never had a crisis like this. These infections are painful and nasty, they can even be life-threatening, so you want to avoid them at all costs. Girls are particularly vulnerable. Your health and future are precious; don’t take a chance of becoming one of the many people who regret putting their entire trust in a vaccine, 27 or a piece of latex. Be smart, delay sex until you’re an adult, then try to find someone who also waited. The closer you get to that ideal, the better your chances of enjoying a life free of these worries.
    This book will help you do that. I’ve combed through current medical research, and collected what you need to know when you sit down with your child. If you’ve got religious values backing you up, you’re in even better shape.
    Almost half of high school students nationwide and about 62 percent of students in the twelfth grade have had sexual intercourse. 31
    Make no mistake: this is a battle, and the battleground is our kids’ minds and values. It’s time for sweeping changes in the way we teach them about intimacy; with one in four teen girls carrying a sexually transmitted infection, we’ve paid the price for telling them “exploration” is beneficial, and a Sex and the City lifestyle can be “safe,” or even “safer.” In providing that message, we have failed our kids.
    The sex ed industry cannot be like Casablana ’s Captain Renault, “shocked” about soaring rates of genital infections while crusading for “sexual freedom.” It’s one or the other. If their priority is our children’s health, they must focus on fighting herpes and syphilis, not sexism and
homophobia. They must grow up, shed their 1960s mentality, and enter the twenty-first century.
    Then they must respond to this catastrophe by declaring war on teen sexual behavior. Yes, war —just as we’ve declared war on smoking, drinking, and transfats. Stop foisting the ill-conceived notion that sexual openness and exploration is healthy. That was never true, and it’s surely not true now, with genital bacteria and viruses infecting another young person every 3.5 seconds . 28
    How much worse can it get?
    It’s time to trash the SIECUS and Planned Parenthood curricula, along with the sites they recommend, and start over, from scratch. Sex education in the twenty-first century should have one agenda: to keep kids free of unnecessary physical and emotional distress. It will require straight talk with all the sobering facts. There’s much to look forward to, kids will be told, but you’ve got to play it smart. It will remind them: you are responsible for yourselves; you alone will determine your sexual health; it will convince them that momentary pleasures are definitely not “worth it.” And it will give them our vote of confidence—we know you can do it.
    This book is a tool for parents, health care providers, and teachers to counter the destructive messages that kids are getting—not only from MTV, but from national organizations supported by their tax dollars. It sounds an alarm, delineates the issues, and provides practical solutions.
    If only I’d known..., patients tell me. If only someone had told me . My hope is that the information in these pages will help spare parents, teachers, health providers—anyone involved in the lives of young people—from hearing that plea in the future.

Conclusion
    Sex Education for the Twenty-first Century
    I T’S BEEN ALMOST FIFTY YEARS since we embarked on an adventure called sexuality education, all fired up about change and the new world it would bring: open, positive, and free. Where did it get us? From rare instances of teen infections to nine million new cases a year. From two bugs to two dozen. It got us to babies having babies, sixth graders on the