A Proposal to Institute Comprehensive Sexual Health Education in Texas Public Schools

TO: Jim Jones, Texas State Board of Education
FROM: Ian Anderson, Skyline High-School Faculty
DATE: March 16, 2014
SUBJECT: Instituting Comprehensive Sexual Health Education in Public Schools

Here is my proposal you requested February 28 for moving ahead with comprehensive sexual-health education in Texas public schools.
All of the findings were fairly straightforward and our initial thoughts were right about abstinence-only-until-marriage education failing our state. Teen pregnancy and STDs are skyrocketing and we’re one of the only states to still push abstinence-only.
The textbooks we’ve been purchasing for the past two-decades are full of misleading and inaccurate information. Our students are just not getting the education they need to make informed life decisions.
If we don’t make a drastic change and soon I’m very afraid of what our state will look like in the future.
Thanks for selecting me to put this proposal together. I feel very passionate about helping to make a positive impact on our student’s lives. Please give me a call if there are potions of the proposal you might have questions about.

Executive Summary iv

Introduction 1

Current State of Sexual Health in Texas 2

What Are We Teaching? 3
Where Does This Information Come From? 4
Fear and Shame Tactics as Education 4
Promotes Outdated and Biased Stereotypes. 5
Conclusions and Recommendations 6
What We Should Be Teaching. 6
Works Cited 8

Figure 1: Pregnancy Rates U.S. vs. Industrial Nations 1
Figure 2: Graph of Sexual Risk Behavior 2
Figure 3: Direct Quotations 3

This proposal evaluates the current state of Texas’ sexual-health education and presents recommendations for improving the failing system.
Texas has failed its students.
The rates of teen pregnancy and transmittal of STDs is on the rise and has been climbing ever higher in the state of Texas. Abstinence-only-until-marriage education has failed to curtail the sexual activity of our school-age citizens and has made a negative impact on the choices they make.
Texas teenagers are more likely to not use condoms or other forms of birth control when they become sexually active and are at higher risk for STDs and STIs than 90% of their peer group across the United States.
Our current educational practices of fear, shame and misinformation must be retooled in order for our youth to begin making informed decisions about their health and bodies.
We can change.
It is possible to move forward and away from abstinence-only education and towards a comprehensive sexual health education that will promote abstinence as the best choice but will also:
Provide accurate information about human sexuality
Allow young people to develop and understand their values, attitudes, and insights about sexuality
Help young people develop relationships and interpersonal skills
Help young people exercise responsibility regarding sexual relationships
These changes might be awkward for some teachers but are vital to the sexual health of our teenagers. It is with that consideration that I recommend this new curriculum be mandatory across the state of Texas. We must remove the ability for schools to opt out of teaching because it makes them uncomfortable.

Most Americans support abstinence from sexual activity for our youth, particularly for younger adolescents. However abstinence-only education being taught in Texan schools is detrimental to the sexual health of these same youth we want to protect.
Since 1981 the US has been pushing abstinence-only-until-marriage education as the only viable form of sexual health education. This highly constricting education has resulted in the US having the highest rate of teenage pregnancies among every other industrialized nation (Stanger-Hall and Hall).
While other states have been combating abstinence-only education with comprehensive sexual health education, Texas has not. This short-sightedness has contributed to Texas having both the fifth highest rate of syphilis infection (SIECUS State Profile: Texas) and third highest rate of teenage pregnancies (Carr) in the US among teens aged 15 to 19.
It has been twenty-two years since abstinence-only-until marriage education has been the only form of sexual health education taught in Texas. If this form of education worked then pregnancies and sexually transmitted disease among teenagers would be going down, the opposite of this is happening. We must correct the ship for our future generations and we must do it now.

Even if Texas was being graded on a curve, the state as a whole would receive an “F” for the effectiveness of its sexual health education programs. Teenagers aged 15 to 19 are regularly more sexually active and less responsible than the national average.
According to a 2011 Texas Youth Risk Behavior Survey 49% of high-school girls and 55% of high-school boys reported having sexual intercourse. This is versus the national average of 46% for girls and 49% for boys (SIECUS State Profile: Texas).
Further more than a third of Texas high-school students are considered sexually active, and of these students less than half reported using condoms or birth-control (SIECUS State Profile: Texas).
Figure 2: 2011 Texas Youth Risk Behavior Survey (SIECUS State Profile: Texas)
Texas state legislature lends itself to an outdated methodology and way of thinking that needs to be updated. These laws include that students can still be separated by gender and that schools can choose not to teach sex education (of any form) (SIECUS State Profile: Texas).
The wording of some of the laws also allows for misinformation to be willingly introduced to the classroom, such as teaching “contraception and condom use in terms of human use reality rates instead of theoretical laboratory rates” (SIECUS State Profile: Texas). What does “human use reality” even mean when compared to “laboratory rates?”

The real harm comes from what is being taught. While abstinence is ideal, it is not realistic.
The average age for sexual intercourse in the U.S. is 17 while the average age of marriage is 26 for women and 28 for men (Stanger-Hall and Hall). This means that teaching abstinence- only-until-marriage education is not working. This also means there is an educational gap.
If sex-education is taught at all (remember state law says it can be skipped) it is generally abstinence-only education which is a miasma of misleading and incorrect information.
Typically abstinence-only programs in Texas either ignore contraceptives entirely or only discuss the failure rates of contraceptives (Carr). This emphasis on failure means most students will not use any form of contraceptive when they become sexually active.
Further studies of abstinence-only texts and classroom materials show misleading and factually inaccurate information regarding condoms, STDs and pregnancy as well as a dependence on same and fear-based instruction, and promoting gender and sexual-orientation bias (Texas Freedom Network).
Where Does This Information Come From?
It is almost impossible to determine the source of the misinformation found in the material being taught in Texas state classrooms as almost nothing is cited. Trying to find the sources of un-cited “facts” – such as being sexually active increases the risk of suicide and that you have a higher rate of being a victim of crime (Sexuality Information Education Council of the United States) – could possibly lead us to two organizations that are both conservative value propaganda machines.
The Heritage Foundation and The medical Institute – formerly The Medical Institute for Sexual Health – are both organizations who go out of their way to research and publish (without peer review or scrutiny) reports promoting abstinence-only education. Both of these organizations will take data from legitimate findings in high-risk areas – such as studies on Kenyan prostitutes or Ugandans living in HIV prevalent communities – to make wild claims in regards to STDs, pregnancy, condom failure rates and much more (Wiley and Wilson).
Fear and Shame Tactics as Education.
Texas schools routinely use fear and shame to enforce their strict abstinence-only policies. The fact that it is illegal to provide students with condoms at school (Carr) is only one of the many examples.
The risks of medical complications from being sexually active are very real. With the increased spread of STDs and increase in sexually active teenagers this information must be a part of any sexual-health education; however Texas school materials exaggerate or blatantly lie about this information in order to make teens terrified of any and all sexual activity (Wiley and Wilson).
Some of the exaggerated claims include:
Cervical Cancer
Aggression Towards Women
Suicide
Divorce
Infertility
Poverty
Radical Hysterectomy
Low Self-Esteem
Disappointing God Death
(Wiley and Wilson)
Another common tactic is to utilize peer-pressure to make those who abstain seem morally and socially superior than those who do not. A number of instructional materials and methods taught in Texas schools portray “unmarried people who engage in any sexual behavior as ‘unhappy’ individuals with low self-esteem and universally poor judgment” (Wiley and Wilson).
Many of these tactics go as far as to make students feel ashamed of their bodies at a time when they are already scared and vulnerable of the changes they are experiencing (Sexuality Information Education Council of the United States).
Promotes Outdated and Biased Stereotypes.
One of the more particularly distasteful forms of abstinence-only education comes in the form of reinforcing outdated and harmful gender bias on impressionable youth. In the WIAT training manual – being taught in 53 districts thoroughout Texas (Wiley and Wilson) – we find sexist passages depicting antiquated gender roles of men being heads of house and women being stay-at-home wives (Sexuality Information Education Council of the United States).
One egregious gender biased stereotype appears again and again in abstinence-only materials; that of the female being the “sexual gatekeeper” (Wiley and Wilson). This gender bias is telling students that males cannot control themselves sexually and most – if not all – responsibilty falls on the shoulders of females. This is an incredibly dangerous message to be spreading with consideration towards sexual assault and domestic violence (Wiley and Wilson).

What We Should Be Teaching.
Human sexuality is a complex and beautiful thing but we are teaching that it is dirty and embarrassing. This needs to stop.
A factual comprehensive sexual education program must be implemented state-wide. This program should:
Provide accurate information about human sexuality
Allow young people to develop and understand their values, attitudes, and insights about sexuality
Help young people develop relationships and interpersonal skills
Help young people exercise responsibility regarding sexual relationships
This comprehensive look at sex-education must be open and honest and accurately discuss abstinence, pressure to become sexually active, being sexually active and proper use of contraceptives.
Using fear and shaming education tactics needs to be removed entirely and only medically factual information from peer-reviewed sources should be allowed to be taught in class.
This should also be compulsory education, meaning schools do not get to opt out of educating students because the subject makes the teacher feel awkward.
I strongly feel that if properly educated Texans will be able to make intelligent and informed decisions regarding their sexual health. Studies also show that more than 90% of Texan parents want this education for their children (Texas Freedom Network).

Carr, Brian. "Blind to the Facts: Sex Education in Texas Public Schools." 2 August 2013. Lubock-Avalanche Journal. 8 March 2014 .
Hauser, Debra. "Five Years of Abstinence-Only-Until-Marriage Education: Assessing the Impact." 2008. Advocates for Youth. 8 March 2014 .
Planned Parenthood. "Implementing Sex Education." 2014. Tools for Educators. 3 March 2014 .
Sexuality Information and Education Center of the United States. "Sexuality Information and Education Center of the United States." 2012. In Their Own Words: What Abstinence-Only-Until-Marriage Programs Say. 2 March 2014 .
—. "SIECUS State Profile: Texas." 2012. Sexuality Information and Education Center of the United States. 3 March 2014 .
Sexuality Information Education Council of the United States. "Community Action Kit." 2009. WAIT TRAINING 80/20 MANUAL REVIEW. 5 March 2014 .
Stanger-Hall, Kathrin F. and David W. Hall. "Abstinence-Only Education and Teen Pregnancy Rates: Why We Need Comprehensive Sex Education in the U.S." 2011.
Texas Freedom Network. "Sex Education in Texas Public Schools: Progress in the Lone Star State." January 2011. Texas Freedom Network Education Fund. 3 March 2014.
Toledo , Chelsea. "Abstinence-only education does not lead to abstinent behavior, UGA researchers find." 29 November 2011. UGA Today. 27 February 2014 .
Wiley, David and Kelly Wilson. "Texas Freedom Network Education Fund." January 2009. Just Say Don't Know: Sexuality Education in Texas Public Schools. 3 March 2014 .