While the topic always seems to turn into a hot controversy in Cincinnati, a new survey has found that parents nationwide want their children’s education to talk openly about sex.
Parents would rather have their children understand how to protect themselves from unplanned pregnancies and sexually transmitted diseases than to be taught abstinence-only sexual education.
According to a Hickman-Brown Research Inc. national poll that surveyed 1,050 adults, eight out of 10 Americans do not believe that sexuality education encourages sexual activity.
Try telling that to people who have opposed Ohio’s Model Health and Physical Education Program. About seven months ago, this program and another, which would use public money from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention to train teachers in controversial sex education, were the target of a blowout debate.
But since that controversy erupted in November, the issue of how and when sex education should be taught in Ohio has practically disappeared
The Cincinnati Enquirer, a state school board candidate and a former state senator attacked the draft model program as “value-free” sex education for students in kindergarten through 12th grade. The opposition disagreed with the lack of abstinence teaching in the program.
But those developing the model pointed out, as was obvious from reading the model, that the proposal only provided a framework for local school districts to work within in deciding their sex education curriculum.
Responding to the debates and protests, the Ohio General Assembly passed an amendment that required legislative hearings on the proposed model and the training funded by the CDC.
The Ohio Department of Education has not totally discarded the proposal to expand sex education or the funding from the CDC for training.
LeeAnne Rogers, spokeswoman for the Ohio Department of Heath, said the model is on hold indefinitely.
“It has been put aside while we have moved on to other work,” she said. “There has been no decision to scrap it.”
But there has not been any decision to implement the programs either, she said.
Rogers said the money from the CDC to be used to train community leaders also was frozen back last December after the controversy erupted.
In March, a report from the Ohio Department of Health noted that chlamydia rates had climbed to 25 percent and gonorrhea rates climbed to 14 percent, statewide.
The report also revealed the highest rate for sexually transmitted diseases were among teen-agers 15 and older.
New studies showing that people approve of sexuality education extending beyond abstinence-only teaching, coupled with increasing rates of sexually transmitted diseases in Ohio, are not putting pressure on the state to move either of the programs back to the front burner anytime soon, Rogers said.
“It is still on hold, and I don’t see any change in the future,” she said.
Dick Meyer, Cincinnati Public Schools’ agency/student program manager, said that even if Ohio’s model program were moving forward, it would not affect the district’s health instruction.
In CPS, sex education is part of the district’s health curriculum that is taught from kindergarten through high school. The program is designed to be age-appropriate, Meyer said. All sixth-, seventh- and eighth-graders participate in a Postponing Sexual Involvement program, created by Children’s Hospital, which teaches students how to resist peer pressure to become sexually active.
This article appears in Jun 9-15, 1999.
