Why not teach the facts?

"Sex & Teens: Why Abstinence Isn't Working" -O magazine

I was flipping through a copy of O magazine, the one Oprah puts out there and I found an article
about teens and sex, a topic that seems to always be in the headlines. The article focused on the failures of abstinence only sex education in this country. According to the article, the government has spent more than $1 billion since 1996 promoting abstinence only education for teenagers, because they are convinced that telling teens to wait until marriage will reduce the risk of pregnancy, HIV, STDs, so on and so forth. Hello government officials, its not working! To drive the point home even further that abstinence only education isn't working, the author states that by not properly educating teens about safer sex practices, they have an even greater risk of contracting HIV or other STDs. Teens do not want to hear that waiting until marriage is the only solution, they want the facts.

According to a study featured in the article, "Abstinence only programs did not lower the incidence of unprotected sex, the frequency of STDs and pregnancy, or the number of partners students had; nor did it get them to use condoms more often, or ironically enough, pursue abstinence." This quote says it all, there needs to be a more comprehensive program in place for teenage students. Teens do not want to be lectured, or scared by educators falsely comparing condom use to playing a game of Russian roulette. Teens that are sexually active do not want to feel guilty or disgusting, they just want to have the knowledge of proper protection and to know that the education they receive is useful in their lives.

A quote from the article that sums up the main point is, "Successful programs are those in which every single activity is designed to get the students to realize that they should not be having unprotected sex, that abstaining completely is purely the safest and best, but if they do have sex, they should always use condoms and other contraception." That pretty much covers my beliefs too, that teens should be given all the information out there about safe sex. With that knowledge they will be able to make the choices best suited for their lives.

Lauren Greenfield

"Fast Forward" Lauren Greenfield

The lives of teenagers involve delicate balance between who they are on an individual level, and what media/society adds to that individual. Lauren Greenfield gives an interesting introduction to her work in this preface. She describes teenagers growing up in the diverse neighborhoods of LA and all of the outside influences that truly impact their every day lives. She began in an affluent private school, and worked her way into the inner city schools, documenting the teens that she encountered along the way. There were many obvious differences between the teenagers, but at the same time there were many similarities.

One quote from the preface that really resonated with me was, "Whether it is the desire to be an adult when one is a child, to be a gangster when one is privileged, to be famous when one is unknown, or to look like a model when one does not, young people are preoccupied with becoming other than they are" (Greenfield). In this quote I found truth, it is human nature, especially as a teenager to dream of a better or different life. From a young age children are taught to dream about the future and what they want to be when they grow up. From Greenfield's perspective, this aspect of childhood is amplified. In her journey she witnessed affluent teenagers acting like gang members and inner city teens acting as though they were wealthier. This all boils down to the old saying that, "The grass is always greener on the other side." As members of a society influenced by images of the media, children, teenagers and adults alike are always wishing for the better toy, the new clothes or the better paying job. There seems to be no satisfaction with accepting ourselves at face value, but that is what society has led us to believe.

The only part of the preface that I had some trouble with were the references to gang violence and the inner city culture. This was simply because I have no concrete knowledge about it. The only images of gang violence and culture that I have seen have come from television and movies, which is tainted with what the media wants viewers to see and think about it. I have also never spent any significant amounts of time in the inner city and to truly get an understanding of a place, in my opinion you have to be immersed in the culture for a period of time or live there.

Another quote from the preface reminded me of the documentary that we watched during Marco's presentation about hip hop. "Kids from all sides of the tracks idealized the images of gangsta rap and mimicked those that were missing in their own lives. Affluent kids dressed and talked like gangsters; inner-city kids simulated the trappings of wealth." (Greenfield) She brings up the point that media effects teenagers from all walks of life and does not discriminate, everyone is pretty much receiving the same message, but may interpret those messages in a different way.

Towards the end of the preface Lauren Greenfield discusses how, "The pictures are not intended as portraits and do not attempt to portray the "essence" of individual subjects. Rather, I have tried to make pictures that reveal an element of our culture as it manifests itself in the lives of children." I would like to find out what elements of our culture were the most prominent in the teenagers she documented. From reading the preface I would guess wealth, but I wonder if anything unexpected turned up during her research.