Kids Are Dumb. Social Reengineering Is Dumber.

Ten years and £150 million later, massive sex education effort fails to curtail teen pregnancy.

....Britain tops the league table of teenage mothers in western Europe, despite also having a record number of school-age abortions.

That's right. Almost 60 percent of their teen pregnancies end in abortion, yet the number of teen moms has still risen.

Norman Wells, of the Family Education Trust charity, said that the Government had allowed the "systematic removal of every restraint that used to act as a disincentive to under-age sex". There was no evidence that easy availability of contraception reduced teenage pregnancy rates, instead it added to pressure on young girls by normalising under-age sex, he said.

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Girls who could obtain contraception before the age of consent were more likely to become sexually active, leading to higher rates of sexually transmitted infections, pregnancies and abortions, he said.

The combination of sexual images in the media with explicit sex education had broken down the natural inhibitions of children about sex, while progressively easier availability of contraception meant that young girls could no longer use fear of pregnancy as a reason to reject sexual advances, Mr Wells added.

There's another reason that early sexualization leads to disease and pregnancy despite the availability and widespread use of condoms and other contraceptives, and nobody ever mentions it.

If I may be so bold: kids are clumsy dumbshits. That's not a putdown. We were all helplessly stupid once.

This is why parents are legally required to protect them and keep an eye on them until they're 18, and why we pay public schools to educate them.

You can't trust children not to get themselves killed or do stupid nonsensical shit for years on end, but you're going to tell them 'We know you're gong to have sex, it's inevitable,' and trust them to be 100% responsible with contraceptives at age 13? Really?

Isn't it, just as a practical matter you understand, easier and more effective to tell girls not to give it up or else they'll be a huge disappointment to their parents and ruin their fuckin' lives? That's old-school, but apparently it worked as well or better than contraceptives every damn day of the week.

The article glosses over the epidemic of disgusting venereal diseases that are affecting younger and younger kids. Diseases that often have lifelong health consequences.

What would you rather your daughter experience: a few years of inhibiting shame, or chlamydia?

Andrew Lansley, the shadow health secretary, said that the Government's failure was rooted in an attempt to find "state-led solutions" to problems that needed to be tackled by families and communities. "Our research has shown that progress is only being made in the areas where people are relatively well-off, whereas in deprived areas the situation is often getting worse.

"What we actually need is for family-led organisations, and local communities and the voluntary sector to work together on these problems."

Emphasis mine. These are the same people who were getting the job done before people advanced such bright ideas about trusting kids to behave sexually like responsible adults. You remember, the stifling traditional society that has been discarded because it was threatening our joie de vivre?

What's old is new again, it would seem.

posted by Laura. at 11:29 AM

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