6. Reality Tv Shows Do More Harm Than Good to Malaysian Society.

Failing our Youth-Teaching Abstinence- Only Programs
Sex education is an important component in today's education curriculum, yet a great number of students complete sex education classes or courses with a distorted view of sexuality. Students who are taught solely to abstain from sexual relations, typically lack a good understanding of contraception, as well as safe-sex practices. Alternatively, our youth today only learn from these classes that they should not have sex until they are married. Abstinence- only programs in public schools and private schools have become a consistent part of the education curriculum mainly due to the fact that millions of dollars are given to schools to implement these programs. Sex education classes do have the good intention of 'pleading their case' for young people to wait until marriage before having sex, but abstinence-only programs are not only flawed in many ways they also present a biased perspective and are falling short of achieving the goals they set out to accomplish in teaching our youth sex education.
Starting in 1996, the United States government passed a law giving funding to states that offered abstinence-only programs in public schools. Collectively, since 1996, over half of a billion dollars has been granted to states that promote and include abstinence-only programs in their curriculum. There are stipulations on receiving this money, however, which include agreeing to and following a clearly defined set of rules. The rules dictate that a school's abstinence-only program must have as its exclusive purpose teaching the social, psychological, and health gains to be realized by abstaining from sexual activity. Students must be taught that they are likely to suffer harmful effects if they have sex before marriage. They also must be taught that the "expected standard" is for school-age children not to engage in sexual activity and for adults to engage in sexual relations only within marriage. Schools that are awarded these funds must teach students that they should "just say no" to, and completely abstain from sex until they are united in marriage. The schools are not permitted by any means to teach students about safe sex and "may not mention contraception except to point out the failure rates of various methods". In some cases, states have refused the federal funding for these programs in their desire to determine their own ways and methods to teach sex education, still at present 43 states do participate in the program. With an incentive to receive millions of dollars from the government every year, many schools adhere to the rules required for being granted funding and now promote abstinence in their classrooms. They promote their abstinence-only programs with encouraging titles such as "ReCapturing the Vision," "Teens in
Control," and "My Choice, My Future!" They additionally encourage students to sign virginity pledges vowing not to have sex until marriage, to proudly wear their "purity rings," and to carry their "abstinence till marriage" cards. The goal of these programs is to encourage students to develop a strong sense of self and to avoid the negative consequences that might result from sexual activity, but there is a fallacy: abstinence-only programs do not work.
Studies show that abstinence-only programs fail to reduce sexual activity by young people. In 2007, the United States Department of Health and Human Services released a comprehensive study of abstinence programs. This government-funded study involved more than 2000 students. The authors ascertained that findings from this study provide no evidence that abstinence programs implemented in upper elementary and middle schools are effective in reducing the rate of teen sexual activity. The authors concluded that findings indicate that youth in the abstinence-only programs were no more likely than students not in the programs to have abstained from sex. Furthermore, among those who reported having had sex, they had similar numbers of sexual partners and had initiated sex at the same mean age.