Saturday, April 1, 2006

Parents want more modesty when teaching sex education

Argen Duncan El Defensor Chieftain Reporter, aduncan@dchieftain.com

The Socorro Consolidated Schools Board of Education heard complaints about sex-related portions of the new state health education standards at their meeting Tuesday.

One mother said the guidelines call for educators to introduce students to sexual topics at too young of an age. She and others also complained that standards don't teach abstinence or encourage character building.

The state rules have an opt-out policy for parents to remove their children from the sexuality portion of the health education.

One mother, Adrianna Carilli, said many parents are unhappy with the performance standards, which fall under broad benchmarks in the state Public Education Department health education requirements.

The standards require students to know proper terminology of body parts starting in kindergarten.

"I think that's a little young," Carilli said. "It can take away children's modesty."

She said they needed to know good and bad touches, however.

Standards involve teaching third- and fourth-graders the effects of lifestyle choices on the body, including abstinence. Carilli said children don't need to learn that in third grade. She also complained that abstinence education stops when they are older.

"Well, there are a lot of reasons protected sex is not good," she said.

Carilli named sexually transmitted diseases and emotional damage among the problems. She supports teaching abstinence.

Carilli protested teaching fifth- and sixth-graders how to access sexuality-related health products. She said the Maternal and Child Health abstinence education program dropped the Socorro County teenage pregnancy rate from the highest in the state to 20th out of 33 counties.

She criticized the standards for calling for third-graders and younger children to learn about same-sex families, teaching students to question values and social norms even at young ages and including little about marriage.

"Long-term goals are hardly mentioned," she said.

Carilli said the standards don't discourage promiscuity in high school students as long as they use protection.

Professional abstinence-education researcher Stan Weed spoke after Carilli, saying the evidence doesn't match the conclusions used to justify teaching non-abstinence sexual education. In areas of condom use, knowledge about birth control and desirability of having babies before marriage, the students in the program teaching birth control instead of abstinence did the same as or worse than those in the control group.

Wood said he and his company have evaluated abstinence education programs around the country.

"Some of these abstinence programs work, and some don't," he said.

He can't find one comprehensive sex education program, as opposed to abstinence-based teaching, that shows a decrease in sexually transmitted diseases or teenage pregnancy.

Carol Sullivan, Maternal and Child Health community outreach coordinator for abstinence education, served on the committee that produced the standards.

Sullivan said she understood the state would hold four public forums for input and give her a draft to review. She received no draft or notification of the forums.

She was told only two forums occurred and the few participants supported comprehensive sex education.

Sullivan said the benchmarks didn't change, but the committee added performance standards, which include sex education, under them. The state legislature passes the benchmarks, but doesn't have to approve the performance standards.

With the No Child Left Behind Act, Sullivan said, educators wouldn't have time to teach every performance standard.

"It's just not even possible," she said.

Sullivan said the health criteria contain many good things, such as nutrition and physical education points. However, the sex education standards are controversial, and there was little chance for local input, she said.

Socorro schools Director of Human Resources Vannetta Perry spoke of supporting local control.

"We believe in parental rights, and we believe in local autonomy," she said.

Board President Tony Gonzales said he thought the concern was genuine and wanted to hear from parents.

Attendee Peggy Sanchez said students needed to know good values as well as information about health and their bodies.

Later in the meeting, Randall Westfall, pastor of Trinity Christian Fellowship, said he was happy and grateful that the school system had previously embraced an abstinence-based, character-building sex education program.

"But from the faith community, we're just really concerned that the schools reflect the values we have here," he said.

Westfall said pulling students out of public schools is heart wrenching because the resulting loss of government funds hurts the schools.

Gonzales spoke of wanting to have the standards changed or avoid teaching them.

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