A Texas Travesty

I subscribe to Salon.com's newsletter. An article titled, "Texas: The State of (Mis) education" caught my eye. I read it and was absolutely appalled. Apparently, the big message provided by the abstinence only sex ed literature given to students there is that if they have premarital sex, they will die. They will get an STD, commit suicide out of shame or die outright from a disease. No info on how to prevent that (condoms can fail, you know) or realistic advice about what really happens when you choose to have sex. No, just attempt to scare 'em to death. The article goes on to say that Texas has the third highest rate of teen pregnancy in the nation. Imagine that. 

One can only hope that with this new, enlightened administration coming in, we will see sex education improved for teens, all education really. One thing President Obama said in his speech Tuesday night that gave me real hope for our children was that he wanted to see parents more involved in their children's education. Let's hope they have the good sense to realize that abstinence only misinformation does a disservice to their children. A frank talk with teenagers about their options goes a lot farther in preventing teen pregnancy than any threat or scare tactic ever could.