Sex Ed Is Failing In America

Earlier this week, it was announced that the birth rate for 2007 broke the previous baby-boom record that was set in 1957. But, disturbingly, the out-of-wedlock birth rate also hit a new high. We are now seeing unwed motherhood at a rate of 40% of all births (See Full Story).

Obviously, the progressive viewpoint of providing sex education in our schools and the movement towards handing out birth control isn't working. And why should it? We've got an educational system in this country that can't teach the basics of reading and math, and somehow, we expect that same system to do a good job in teaching sex ed?

The progressives and liberals always feel that the State is the better educator in all matters and not the parents. But, just as welfare recipients became habitually comfortable and dependent on a welfare system and had no desire to break out of that system by finding a job, our parents, too, have abrogated all responsibility for sex education because they, too, have become absolutely dependent on the "system" to do it for them.

As a consequence, we have a teen population in America, today, who is in the wilderness between knowing how to have sex but, without the values and risk information that had been previously taught through proper and continuous parenting and through the moral anchoring that was often found in religion.

Being an unwed mother is one the greatest life changing events that can happen to a woman; especially at the lower ends of the economic scale. Often, it is the reason for girls not to complete their high school education. Many times it is the sole reason why women have to live their entire lives below the poverty level.

I just think that we, as a country, need to revisit the whole concept of sex ed. It isn't working and it either needs to be abandoned completely or seriously reworked. For years, astute parents have been crying out for abstinence to be taught and their voices have been ignored. Because sex ed has become such a failure, unto itself, the trend now, is to overcome its failings by handing out free birth control. When that doesn't work, are free high school abortions the next step?

One way or another, the parents have to be brought back into the process of sex ed. Obviously, the old saying of "if it ain't broke, don't fix it" doesn't apply here!

And, that's just my opinion.

Image by mahalie's photostream on Flickr with Creative Commons Licensing. Some rights retained. (Click to View Other Works).