Welcome to the New High Show on Education. I'm Pamela Clark, founder and director of the New Heights Educational Group. And I'm here with David Smith, the founder of Silicon Valley High School, who has helped us get these podcasts produced and delivered to you. Yes, Pamela, when we saw the great things that you and your army of volunteers were achieving at New Heights, we wanted to get involved.
We're happy to work with you to leverage the internet and make quality education accessible and affordable to everyone everywhere. Thank you, David. We appreciate Silicon Valley High School helping us to get these podcasts out to the hundreds of thousands of listeners from all over the world. So I hope you enjoy the show.
Welcome to the New Heights Educational Group. My name is Kaitan Bihan, your host. It's so slightly sick, but getting better. Thankfully, our today's show will be on the board.
I'm going to talk about the more important support of being the more dominant, it was in the argument. And so, initially, with those issues, it's divided because strategy for teaching, it's a tough education so that both parents and students are getting the best education. And they can. Parents are satisfied in that.
It doesn't offend particular parents or familial interpretations of what is right to teach their children or what's not. So we were talking a lot about that. And then some other issues that have to do with the teachers themselves, which is a lot of training for teachers, a lot of support for teachers, a lot of times teachers have to very risky teaching because of the possibility of perhaps offending students in class or getting in trouble by the parents, teaching something that perhaps maybe not necessarily viewed as PC. So we talked a lot about that.
And so in this show, I want to talk a little bit more about the issues addressing issues. And so we're going to talk about addressing the problems and what makes effective sex education. So again, this information was taken from public education, been perpetually sick, and hopefully soon won't be. So that way, I was able to have a better time listening to me speak.
I do apologize because that's not very good. But I'm just talking about the Good Month Institute for Education and Public Health. And then we're going to begin with addressing the problems. So, education proponents point to several steps that would address concerns about teacher preparedness and perceptions of lack of community support.
These include improving just professional training. Undergraduate institutions should require prospective teachers of certain disciplines such as health education to take both subject matter and methodology courses on sexuality, STD, and the education, sex litigation, advocate. And they say all states should have or adopt certification requirements for teachers of sex education, HIV, and STD education. They should also require that school districts do more to facilitate staff development.
In 1997, the Hawaii legislature adopted a resolution along these lines encouraging the State Department of Education to study the feasibility of requiring all health teachers to be certified to teach health, to take five continuing education classes and specify the health related areas, including teenage pregnancy and STD and HIV prevention, and to be evaluated along with their curriculum by students. Also established local advisory committees, proponents of comprehensive sex education suggest that communities create local advisory committees, compose parents or legislators, medical professionals, and other community leaders to review and improve curriculum, look at other materials being proposed for youth and sexuality education courses. Some states already require that such a community be established. And advisory committee builds support for the program and explains the potential to make sure that the program is approved by the Department of Health.
The committee members may not agree on every issue, but they reach a decision the committee generally stand behind it, and even one challenge. This law backing, the committee's notes, provides protection for teachers, encourage parental involvement. Advisory committees have the additional advantage of encouraging parents to become more involved in development and implementation of sexual education courses, including parents, and the option of taking their children out in sexuality education classes, provides such opportunities for parents' active engagement. Terrell Newberry, Executive Director of the National Health Information Network at the National Education Association, and former Head of Family Life Education in Fairfax County, Virginia, and there's an opt-out program that doesn't make parents more comfortable and knowledgeable.
Newberry and others suggest that teachers hold information sessions early in the school year to get parents an opportunity to learn about the curriculum and review materials that will be used in the course. This podcast is brought to you by Silicon Valley High School, the world's fastest growing, video based, self-paced, teacher supported, fully accredited online school. That's recommended by more than 96% of students. Take individual courses at just $95 each, or earn your high school diploma at any age.
Check us out at svhs.co. In a novel approach to this issue, Washington State, and this grant is to remove their child from mandated AIDS education classes, but only after parents have attended a program offered by the school district on weekends and evenings to review the curriculum and to meet with the teacher. Promote the benefits of comprehensive programs. On a broader level, sex education advocates believe that continuing to make the case for comprehensive programs is critical.
Our message to class plan parent and community has to be that it is more or less a broad people information that can save lives and promote health. Just so you know, campaigns clearly do not provide such information. Despite, and this is our absolute only campaign, despite the current momentum of abstinence only movement, there is a reason for optimism that more comprehensive programs will prevail. In several California communities, for example, parents and teachers have successfully opposed efforts by conservative anti-sex education school board members to implement abstinence only curricula or otherwise underline sex education.
Inheavent, for example, the school board was forced to back down from this abstinence only approach to AIDS education after parents and teachers through the school system. Similarly, parents protest stops school board venture county from proceeding with its plan to bar HIV instruction training for teachers. There is a huge backlash to report superintendent Charles Wies. It is like awakening a sleeping diet.
The defeat of conservative incommens, send a clear message to the extreme right that they cannot fulfill their attendance in school board. I'm not going to talk about the fact that sex education was is in proven to be effective sex education. Each year, US team experiences many as 850,000 pregnancies, and these are the age of 25 experience about 9.1 million sexually transmitted infections, or STIs. By the age of 18, 70% of US females and 60% of US males have initiated vaginal sex.
Comprehensive sex education is affecting young people to make healthy decisions about sex and to adopt healthy sexual behaviors. No abstinence only until marriage program has been shown to help teens delay the initiation sex. Most of the sex themselves only do initiate sex. Yet, the US government has spent over $1 billion supporting abstinence only until marriage programs.
Other US government ignores it. Allicens have a fundamental human right to accurate and comprehensive sex health information. Comprehensive sexual education is effective and does not promote sexual risk. Research has identified highly effective sex education and HIV prevention programs that affect multiple behaviors and achieve positive health impacts.
Behavioral outcomes have included delay in the initiation of sex, as well as reducing the frequency of sex, the number of new partners, and the incidence of unprotected sex, sex, or the increasing and has increased the use of condom and contraception among sexually active participants. Long-term impacts have included lower STI or pregnancy rates. No highly effective sex education or HIV prevention education program is eligible for federal funding because the mandate prohibits advocating use of other benefits of condoms and contraception. Evaluations of comprehensive sexual education, HIV and STI prevention programs show that they do not increase rates of sexual initiation, they do not lower the age of which is initiated sex, and they do not increase the frequency of sex, or the number of sex partners among the sexually active youth.
In 2004, the US teen birth rate fell from 52 to 41 per thousand female teens. Some of the first attribute is 75% of the decline to increase contraception to use and 25% of delayed initiation of sex. Others kind of increase contraception to use and delayed initiation of sex about weekly, but our best contraception, contraception, and critical and reducing teenage pregnancy. Asymptomans only programs are dangerous and effective and inaccurate.
The Society for Adolescent Medicine recently declared that abstinence only programs to end fundamental rights to health, information and life. We're going to call the University of University of University's virginity pledge programs increased pledge takers risk for STI and pregnancy, because that he completed that 88% of pledge takers initiated sex prior to marriage, even though some delayed sex for a while. We said STI among pledge takers and non-pledged shakers are similar, even the pledge takers initiated sex later. Pledge takers are less likely to seek STI testing and less likely to use contraception than I did have sex.
In all, the evaluation will be effective in the state-funded abstinence only until marriage programs found no delay in the first act of sexual contact. In fact, our six evaluations have assessed short-term changes in behavior through found no changes. Two found increased sexual activity from pre to post-test and one showed mixed results prior evaluations worked for but found no long-term impact in reducing teen sexual activity. Analysis of the data from youth risk behavior survey found that sexual activity among high school youth declined significantly from 1991 to 1997 prior to large-scale funding of abstinence only in cell marriage programs, but changed total from 1999 to 2003, the federal funding of such programs.
Analysis of federally funded abstinence only pre-defined that over 80% of the curriculum was supported by the US Department of Health and Human Services. Services contained false data information about reproductive health. Specifically, they conveyed false information about the effectiveness of contraceptives, false information about the risk of abortion, whether it's beliefs assigned to this fact, stereotypes about boys and girls assigned to the fact, and medical and scientific errors in fact. Medical organizations, parents and public support conferences, sex education, American Academy, pediatrics, American College of Obstetricians and Medical Association, American Public Health Association, and Michigan Medicine, Society for Adolescent Medicine among others, for comprehensive sex education, including education about both abstinence and also contraceptives and condoms.
In one study, most American adults reported sex education that includes information about both abstinence and also contraception and condoms. In fact, 89% believe that this was important for young people to have information about contraception and prevention of STIs, and that sex education should focus on how to avoid unintended pregnancy and STIs, including HIV. Another recent survey made for a percent of adults, 93% of parents said that sex education should cover contraception. Only 15% of Americans wanted abstinence only education taught in the classroom.
Characteristics have effective sex education. At this time, I identified critical characteristics of highly effective sex education, HIV, NSTI prevention, education programs such programs offer age and culturally appropriate sexual health information in safe environment for participants. Our developed cooperation with members of the target community, especially the young people, is just using clarifying their individual family and community values, and just using involving skills, communication, refusal, and negotiation, providing medically accurate information about both abstinence and also contraception, including condoms. I had a clear goal of presenting HIV and other STIs, or teen pregnancy, focusing on specific health behaviors related to goals and clear messages about these behaviors.
I addressed psychological risk and protective factors with activities to change each targeted risk and to promote each protective factor. In fact, community values and respond to community needs. So I'm participatory teaching methods implemented by trained educators and using all these activities as designed. So that's the article that I pulled out from the Gagmacher Institute, and I'm just going to digress a little, um, debase a little bit with what Pamela sent me with her opinion on sex education and then we'll just, um, after, um, I go through her opinion, I'll just offer mine.
Pamela's opinion that sex education is indeed important and that it should be taught in schools, but that sex education in regard to sexuality and intercourse, contraception, things like that should not be taught as early as some schools have instituted. Um, and so this is not the sex education, what I believe Pamela would support is that puberty teaching about puberty and things like that is much different than they can mostly classify as sex education, but I think that puberty is probably good to teach at a younger age so that children know what to expect that happens to them as they go through the fun and awkward stages of puberty, but I definitely do agree with Pamela that intercourse, contraception, and things like that should not be taught to necessarily elementary or middle school students, or at least not to late middle school or high school. So what I, so what I was saying, so what my opinion is, is that, um, I agree mainly with the article that sexual education is really, really important. Uh, definitely not, so what I ask me is only education, and I think the main reason that is because I grew up with sex education being taught with having resources to learning about STI, how to prevent STI from the HIV, how to prevent pregnancy, the different types of education you can use, um, and I think it really grounds young people, um, especially when they're old enough to understand it, when you're taught abstinence only I feel like you're not really being given, well you're not, you're not really given all the information about what it means to have a sexual relationship with somebody else, and I think that, like I said, the comprehensive programs really ground you into understanding the responsibility of having sexual relations, what it means, what the risks are, psychologically and health-wise, my program, the school that I went to, they kind of like, how to plant a really good job at teaching all the different angles of, um, sex, um, sexuality through, they're not only health, health materials, but also through what psychologically it means to commit yourself to somebody to have sex, things like that, and I really think that it makes students think more about sex in a more responsible way, because you're more exposed to information about sex, about STI, about the different risks associated with different contraception methods, um, different risks associated with having a risky intercourse on pet sex, and I think that it's really important for students to be exposed, because I think that actually, at least for me, I think it's helped me to delay that process of being sexually, sorry, little pretty much, is, um, it's helped me to not want to be sexually active until I'm ready, and I think that's what parents want, they want their children to be, to be able to form their own moral values with all the information that they receive, and I think that the more comprehensive programs that last students do this, to take that information, decide for themselves, and I'm ready for this huge commitment, I'm ready for all the risks that I could have, am I ready, am I ready for pregnancy if something should happen, and those are the questions that my classmates need to think about, if we get pregnant, are we ready for that?
If not, then maybe we shouldn't be having intercourse, even if you are, when you're kinda accepted, so I really think that these programs offer a great amount of information, I do not think in any way that they promote sexual intercourse, if anything I think that they give this student enough information to be informed enough, to be comfortable with saying, I don't want to have sex yet, or I don't want to have sex to, I'm married, and I'm in a committed relationship, and I'm comfortable that if should anything happen, that I'm with somebody that I loved, and it's gonna be okay, or on the opposite side, it can make someone feel comfortable, okay, I want to have intercourse before I'm married, but I know how to protect myself, and I know how to not put myself in a situation to be hurt emotionally, or to be hurt physically, and so I think it helps students from their own values who have given information that they're the class of thought, and I think that's one of the most important things that, like we talked about with the Darwin versus intelligent design to be, that I think one of the most important things that school can provide is information, and the values that you form should not be influenced by this information, but you should have exposure to all this information so that you can make these, you can establish your values, so how do you decide to make a point and call me away, but I do think that, like I said, the most important thing is to expose people who are able to understand, like I said before, these programs should be age appropriate, so I think it's important to expose people to information that is appropriate for their age, so that way when they make the decision to act on this information, they have all this access, everything needs to be protected and safe, and psychologically sound, when I do make a decision to have sex or not have sex, and so that might take on it, and of course, you know, it's up to parents to decide what, you know, right, for their children by strong language, perhaps to like a disability, Darwin, debate to expose their children to as much information that is age appropriate for them, so that way that when they are trying to make a decision, for example, in this case, should I not have sex, I know all the information that the weeks know that if they're going to have sex or not going to have sex, they're comfortable in that, so they're not uncomfortable in the sense because they don't know how to protect themselves or they don't know of STI's, they don't know how to get tested, so I don't think parents can't ever want their children to be in a situation where they want the decision to make, and I think that these programs really helped children and children to be, not children, but young adults, to be very able to make a decision to actually, and to support the encourage parents to find out what these programs are teaching, that you talk to your children, if your children do attend public schools or try to school, that's what they're learning in class, and they're how class is really important for life, that a lot of times it gets overlooked as I was just a health class, but it's something that I found has been very, very important for me, and so I'm strongly encourage parents to get involved with their school, find out what they're teaching, and to talk to their children about it, and have this opening question with them, what are they comfortable with learning, what are they comfortable with, the teaching, how to school, and the audience again, for our very most major questions, I hope that someday that I hope you'll be sick anymore, so I'm done on my own. I have great, great things to give everybody in the audience, and we'll pick up again the week after Thanksgiving. Thank you again so much for listening and have a great weekend. We hope you enjoyed today's show.
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