Basu: Stop wasting tax dollars on abstinence programs
"Never has so much money been spent with so little oversight to so little effect. "
That's James Wagoner, president of a youth organization, responding to a report last week that the federal government's 10-year program to keep people from having sex before marriage has been a failure.
(MG) Duh - YEAH. Does this sound like a privacy intrusion at all? Or brain washing? Let's read on.
Those who took the abstinence-only programs were no more or less likely to have sex than those who didn't, according to the study commissioned by Congress. Which means that taxpayers have been throwing away $176 million a year to try to keep kids from doing what they would anyway, except without the precautionary knowledge.
(MG) I'm curious to know, who gets the $176 million? This sounds so much like a GOP sop to the fundies. Are there any connections to any of the well known televangelists?
It's a cautionary tale against letting an agenda dictate the facts taught, so you end up trying to indoctrinate people instead of educating them.
(MG) I've posted on this before. Here in the land of the free, good ole US of A, we don't have a system of primary and secondary "education" but rather a system of INDOCTRINATION.
Since 1998, Title V, Section 510, of the Social Security Act has provided $50 million to the states to promote abstinence-only-until-marriage programs, which must be matched at 75 percent by state funds if states participate.
The rules don't allow information about the health benefits of condoms or birth control.
(MG) Yes, of course the rules don't allow such information. JUST SAY NO! Take two aspirin, and put them firmly between your knees, young ladies.
Iowa matches its abstinence-only grants at the rate of $3 to every $4 allotted by the feds. For this fiscal year, that amounts to nearly $557,000.
(MG) Wonder if the good people of Iowa are getting their money's worth?
Criticizing abstinence education runs the risk of appearing to favor sex between kids. For the record, I don't. People should wait until they're ready. But it's simplistic to think that the best way to prevent sex is by depriving kids of scientifically-based information. The report by Mathematica Policy Research Inc. didn't find the people who took these classes any more likely to have unprotected sex than a control group, but they were less likely to think of condoms as an effective way to prevent sexually transmitted diseases.
Said Wagoner, who is president of the nonprofit Advocates for Youth, "It is difficult to cite a more glaring example of ideology and politics trumping public-health science."
(MG) I'd consider the No Child Gets Ahead (NCLB) legislation, which I still believe will cause more long term damage to U.S. citizens than any other aspect governor bush's legislative "accomplishments." By wasting time teaching students what to think (what kinds of questions they need to know how to answer to improve their scores), and this involves REALLY wasting their time -- teaching to the test, the bush administration has taken gigantic steps backwards. It's criminal that this country spends but $1,000 per year on education for its black students (from a chicago sun times editorial piece, which I might still be able to find). But it's suicidal to effectively legislate what will be taught, and to have that devour critical class room and teaching time and resources.
And Congress last year expanded the abstinence-only program to target unmarried people up to 29 years old.
(MG) This Congress, they hypocrisy. These congress critters, well, now your TALKING 'BOUT MY GENERATION. I KNOW these people. Went to college in the 60's (which include 1970-1973) with them. We were profligate hedonists, dope smoking, boozing FIENDS. And now, we're gonna tell an unmarried 29-year old ... to .... JUST SAY NO?
The program has already been debunked by the national Institute of Medicine, which has urged Congress to repeal funding for it. The American Academy of Pediatrics, the Society for Adolescent Medicine, and the American Medical Association all favor a comprehensive-education approach that includes information about both abstinence and contraception.
(MG) Just red meat for the fundies, so the Republican party (cheap labor, the cheapest of which always devolves to slavery) show their BASE how theirs is the party of Family Values.
A dozen states conducted their own evaluations and found no evidence of long-term impact. Eight states have opted out of the grants because they didn't think the state matches were justified. Iowa should pull the plug, too.
(MG) Just a de facto way to divert state funds from relevant issues to the trivial. I wonder how many Iowa lives might have been made better had the state matching money been allocated elsewhere.
To its credit, the Iowa Legislature recently passed a bill requiring that research-based sex education be taught in schools.
(MG) An arresting development.
Congress will soon vote on whether to reauthorize the program that funds abstinence-only. It should scrap it. A better alternative might be to pass the REAL Act (Responsible Education About Life), which would support comprehensive sex-education programs while letting states and local school districts choose the curricula.
(MG) This works for me. I'm taking action. Gonna write or e-mail my elected representatives and my local news paper letters to the editors. Thank you Baka Resu.
I'm wondering where the conservative voices usually in favor of protecting taxpayer money stand on abstinence education. I heard from several when I recently decried declining federal college aid. They said paying for college is an individual's responsibility, not the government's.
So is "teaching" people not to have sex the federal government's responsibility - even when it doesn't work?
(MG) What a cogent question. Looking more and more like the emperors have no clothes. Or, as my beloved original surrogate father figure Gene Mendoza used to say, "I knows what I knows, don't donfuse me wid da fax."
The government has even been pushing this ineffective, ideologically-based approach abroad, through the White House faith-based initiative, which mandates at least a third of AIDS-prevention money be spent promoting abstinence.
But as it became clear to me on a trip last fall to Ethiopia, abstinence training is irrelevant in a country where girls marry as young as 8, and 94 percent of girls having sex are married.
(MG) My brother John died way too young of a heart attack which was a complication of AIDS. Given the death sentence, he was quite fortunate. He came down with the pnemonia while acting in a Godspell production in Washington DC, and went directly to the CDC for care. He was one of the earliest AZT trial patients. In the last two years of his life, he accomplished all his goals except for one: he didn't make it back home to sing Oh Holy Night on Christmas eve. He died December 3. To divert funds from medication to the preaching of abtinence is a perversion and a crime. I can't judge those responsible for diverting such funds, but I suspect there is a special level in hell to where they will be sequestered.
In light of Monday's tragic events at Virginia Tech, it seems there might be more pressing uses for government money, such as better violence prevention and mental-health programs. Those are certainly as worthy of a faith-based initiative as anything pertaining to sex but not quite as - well - sexy.
(MG) Typically, we don't get this kind of reasoned, fact-supported, connect the dots type of analysis from the Chicago Tribune op-ed pages. What a delight. My spirits soar. Thanks and bless you Rekha Basu.
People try to put us d-down (talkin bout my generation)
People try to put us d-down (talkin bout my generation)
Just because we get around (talkin bout my generation)
Just because we get around (talkin bout my generation)
Things they do look awful c-c-cold (talkin bout my generation)
Things they do look awful c-c-cold (talkin bout my generation)
I hope I die before I get old (talkin bout my generation)
I hope I die before I get old (talkin bout my generation)
This is my generation
This is my generation
This is my generation, baby
This is my generation, baby
Why dont you all f-fade away (talkin bout my generation)
Why dont you all f-fade away (talkin bout my generation)
And dont try to dig what we all s-s-say (talkin bout my generation)
And dont try to dig what we all s-s-say (talkin bout my generation)
Im not trying to cause a big s-s-sensation (talkin bout my generation)
Im not trying to cause a big s-s-sensation (talkin bout my generation)
Im just talkin bout my g-g-g-generation (talkin bout my generation)
Im just talkin bout my g-g-g-generation (talkin bout my generation)
This is my generation
This is my generation
This is my generation, baby
This is my generation, baby
Why dont you all f-fade away (talkin bout my generation)
Why dont you all f-fade away (talkin bout my generation)
And dont try to d-dig what we all s-s-say (talkin bout my generation)
And dont try to d-dig what we all s-s-say (talkin bout my generation)
Im not trying to cause a b-big s-s-sensation (talkin bout my generation)
Im not trying to cause a b-big s-s-sensation (talkin bout my generation)
Im just talkin bout my g-g-generation (talkin bout my generation)
Im just talkin bout my g-g-generation (talkin bout my generation)
This is my generation
This is my generation
This is my generation, baby
This is my generation, baby
People try to put us d-down (talkin bout my generation)
People try to put us d-down (talkin bout my generation)
Just because we g-g-get around (talkin bout my generation)
Just because we g-g-get around (talkin bout my generation)
Things they do look awful c-c-cold (talkin bout my generation)
Things they do look awful c-c-cold (talkin bout my generation)
Yeah, I hope I die before I get old (talkin bout my generation)
Yeah, I hope I die before I get old (talkin bout my generation)
This is my generation
This is my generation
This is my generation, baby
This is my generation, baby
