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Why do you spend your time bashing the state and its schools for something the parents clearly aren't doing ? You hold parents blameless here ?
It's not the state nor the school's job although schools have taken this up to educate the youth.
Schools present the information. They can't do much more.
Right. That's how I got my first basic sex education - from my parents, in particular a marriage manual that my Daddy the preacher had on his bookshelf in East Texas in the 1950's. (The rule was that I could read any book in his considerable library - or elsewhere - that I could sustain an interest in, and so I picked that up and read it in about 4th grade.) The problem was that I knew everything by its Latin name and that wasn't particularly helpful socially when it was pertinent.
And there's the loud clang of the metal door of a brain shutting.
I'm pointing out that this is a much more complex issue than your simple statistics, that can be manipulated, frankly, to prove whatever you want it to prove (see the study linked to at the top of this thread, for example), AND that deny it however much you will, your prejudice against Texas (still waiting for an answer to your personal experience here, by the way) is obvious. (Not as subtle as perhaps you thought it was, or perhaps you're completely unaware of it - people holding prejudices very often are.)
Again - ok. The stats are wrong. They're all wrong, never trust stats. Someone has an agenda and they're just wrong. Terrible way to view things, statistics. I'm sure the national campaign to prevent teen pregnancy is wrong about Texas and every other state.
And yup, I have to live in Texas to be able to talk about it. Okay. If you're questioning statistics and claiming they're being manipulated or can be, then there is nothing further to discuss. If you don't want to look at fair stats gathered by people who study teen pregnancy trends in this country, that's not my fault. So looks like we're done here. We clearly don't see eye to eye.
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Originally Posted by HappyTexan
Why do you spend your time bashing the state and its schools for something the parents clearly aren't doing ? You hold parents blameless here ?
It's not the state nor the school's job although schools have taken this up to educate the youth.
Schools present the information. They can't do much more.
I'm not bashing the state or judging. The topic is the state of Texas and abortions, so I'm talking about it. If I have said or shared anything blatantly wrong, please let me know. I mean inarguably wrong, not you think I'm wrong or you have a different opinion. I mean inarguably wrong facts.
I have said in a recent post that I DO think responsibility also lies on parents and not just on the school. Maybe you should read all my posts before making claims...
A snippet: -analyze the effectiveness and ineffectiveness of barrier protection and other contraceptive methods including the prevention of Sexually Transmitted Diseases (STDs), keeping in mind the effectiveness of remaining abstinent until marriage;
This Texan disagrees:
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Originally Posted by TexasHorseLady Actually, the law in Texas states that abstinence must be emphasized but that medically accurate contraceptive methods must be taught.
Abstinence is emphasized as the most important/effective/ideal. I have to wonder how much is taught overall. Birth control is taught, but again, it is no secret that there are states like Texas which prefer abstinence programs. There are statistics on this as well. I'm not saying there's no teaching of birth control. I'm saying the emphasis is on abstinence.
What happytexan and what texashorselady posted are not in disagreement. An emphasis on abstinence does not negate the fact that abstinence plus education includes comprehensive sex education. Emphasizing that abstinence is the healthiest choice will not stop a teen from hearing the other parts of the talk or curriculum which include reproductive health info as well as contraception options, info on STD's, how one can catch them, etc.
I don't have preconceived biases. I have statistics. I have Texas's own admission. Do you think they are all wrong or lying? Look at the other posters, on this thread and others, who also make comments about the "abstinence only education." There was a whole thread dedicated to the chlamydia thing where this was discussed at length and more stats were posted. I don't feel like looking for it but if and when I have time I will. Someone shared a pie chart showing how many TX districts prefer abstinence only or abstinence emphasized and it was damn high.
I do think there are other explanations, but I DON'T think TX's eduction program helps those other factors. I KNOW that birth control must be taught in TX, I acknowledged this, but again, I question exactly how much is being taught. How detailed? This makes a difference. When abstinence is emphasized, how much can be devoted to anything else? I am genuinely interested, but there's probably no way to know unless I do extensive research into individual districts which I don't have the time, patience, or even enough interest to do.
There are cultural factors, but they don't act alone.
Abortions have nothing to do with teen pregnancy rates. They affect teen birth rates but not getting pregnant in the first place. That would be blamed on improper use of/education regarding birth control, or maybe belonging to a religion that does not agree with using it.
Again, you're mistaking teen pregnancy and teen birth rate. If a teen goes in for an abortion, clearly she's pregnant. The difference is she's not having the baby while in many more conservative states, the birth rates are higher.
I don't know how they do it. I've never had this issue before. Whatever the standards are, they're probably uniform. There are states who opt out of reporting birth rates as shown in my links earlier (something like 16 of them, maybe?) so perhaps those states use different methods or don't bother reporting at all.
It's clear that some people here have a difference in opinion regarding how they interpret the stats, but I'm not going to keep repeating myself. The reason I brought this up in the first place is because I believe birth control has a direct correlation to abortion. Maybe if people were more likely to use birth control/had better education, the need for abortions would be lower, and fewer women would have to do it themselves because access to abortion clinics is difficult. That's all. It starts with education, everything else comes after. You can convince a religious person to use birth control, as long as they're not Duggar crazy. Those types of people are just hopeless. Education is the key here, like it is for many many things.
I'm not confusing anything. I know the difference between teen pregnancy rates and teen birth rates. What I don't know is how they compile the statistics on it. For instance, I don't know if it's based on surveys like this study, or if abortion clinics and hospitals report the number of abortions and/or miscarriages to the bureau of vital statistics by age. If so, then we would know how many abortions teenagers get in different states, and then get a clearer picture of cultural factors affecting teen birth rates.
I'm still not convinced that there are less pregnancies in some states because the curriculum emphasizes birth control methods. The way you describe the education you received, I imagine bananas or dildos in the classroom and the teacher demonstrating how to put condoms on them. I just don't see how that is more of a factor than controlling by race or cultural factors. Perhaps we have more rural areas in Texas, where it's not so easy for a teenager to get birth control pills or even condoms in a store where people know you and your entire family. Also, we have a higher percentage of Hispanics here, who have higher birth rates. New Jersey has about 19.3% of the population of Hispanic or Latino, whereas Texas has 38.6%. Hispanics have the highest rate of teen birth rates.
I was aborted THREE times before a teen mom finally shat me out. Sorry, sometimes I just like saying that cuz it makes me LOL at life. Then she signed away her rights. She went on to fart out two more rejects from a different father down the line.. Ah, life.
Yes Hispanics are really a big issue with teen pregnancy but look at the diversity of my state. NJ is less than 60% white now. And look at how we compare to Texas. So it's not the biggest issue here. I still stand by my opinion that it is education - or lack thereof. Maybe also religion.
New Jersey is only 19 percent Hispanic.
Also, the teen abortion rate in New Jersey is nearly DOUBLE the rate of the US average. So - teens in NJ aren't avoiding getting pregnant in spite of their educations - they're just having more abortions.
Teen birth rate could explain that, not teen pregnancy rate. Religious people who don't believe in birth control could affect the rate of teen pregnancy, though. But so can "abstinence only" or "abstinence first" education.
But in NJ, the teen PREGNANCY rate is actually within just a few percentage points of the US average - it's just that the teen abortion rate in NJ is significantly higher than the US average. So maybe a bit of that "abstinence first" education might be beneficial.
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TX schools primarily focus on abstinence. Sure, they "teach" other birth control methods, but I would like to see their curriculum on it, compared with for example, my district's when I was in high school only 5-9 years ago. I would like to see how far that "teaching" goes. Do they demonstrate how to put on a condom? Go into detail about various methods, how they are used, how long they work for, and where to find them? Do they teach about the morning after pill? You can tell a kid "here is a list/photos of all of your options," but if you don't explain how they are used, and why, and how exactly they work and for how long and where to get them (doctor? drug store? etc), then it's quite useless, isn't it? TX's standards are quite clear, as I posted a link. They say they also teach about birth control methods, and I believe them, but how much are they emphasized? How much detail? When abstinence is emphasized, I'm inclined to think not that much detail in comparison to abstinence.
Once again - NJ kids aren't all that adept at birth control - but they are more likely to get an abortion. So all that show and tell apparently isn't making a big impact on their sexual behaviors.
You are talking about abstinence plus education and that type of education places an emphasis on abstinence as being the best and healthiest choice for teenagers but it also includes comprehensive sexual and reproductive health education. That information teaches teens about how their reproductive system works, how they can get pregnant and ways that they can get STD's. It includes education about STD's as well as birth control methods, effective rates, etc. It is pretty much the same as comprehensive sex education except that it also comes with the message that abstinence is the best and healthiest choice for teens.
Texas is a large state and I would not assume that all schools use the same curriculum. I wouldn't even assume that all focus on abstinence nor would I assume that all teach sex ed in addition to abstinence. I am sure that it varies quite a bit from one district to the next.
We live in a mid sized Texas town. It's very conservative. My kids all learned comprehensive sex education in school - starting with age appropriate discussions in grade school. This has been the case with every person I know whose kids go to various Texas schools in towns of all sizes. Of course this is anecdotal evidence but I saw the curriculum my kids were taught and it was quite comprehensive - and my youngest graduated ten years ago and my oldest sixteen years ago.
You have your preconceived biases, and no matter how many times people say Texas law mandates that birth control methods be taught, you cannot see there may be other causes for it. That's fine. It's been a long time since I learned sex education in my Texas high school, but they did not demonstrate how to put a condom on and yet we figured it out anyway. To say in this day and age it's all about what you learn in a class is just ridiculous. There are many cultural factors going on here, up to and including a reluctance to get an abortion in the first place.
And I don't know how they determine teen pregnancy rate in New Jersey if the teenagers in question go to an abortion clinic and abort their child. Do they keep statistics on age of girls getting abortions, so they will know the teen pregnancy rate? Does the state include that information when they're talking about teen pregnancy rates? I'm seriously curious because I was unaware there were different statistics of teen pregnancy rates and teen birth rates. If they do it in Jersey, I'm sure they do it in all 50 states.
To give people an idea of just how much Texas' teen pregnancy rate has to do with race and cultural values, white non Hispanics are 43.5 percent of the population. Hispanics are 39 percent of the population - so there are nearly as many Hispanics (who are nearly all of Mexican descent by the way) as there are white, non Hispanics in Texas. However, there were nearly THREE TIMES AS MANY Hispanic teen mothers as there were white, non Hispanic teen mothers in Texas in 2008 (the year I could find the most comprehensive stats on).
In other words, in Texas, though there are slightly more white, NHs than Hispanics, there were 9256 white (NH) teen mothers - and 27,826 Hispanic teen mothers.
64 percent of teen pregnancies in Texas were Hispanic teens. In fact, the rate of white, NH AND black teen pregnancies in Texas is significantly BELOW the national average. The Hispanic rate is DOUBLE the national average.
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I don't have preconceived biases. I have statistics. I have Texas's own admission. Do you think they are all wrong or lying? Look at the other posters, on this thread and others, who also make comments about the "abstinence only education." There was a whole thread dedicated to the chlamydia thing where this was discussed at length and more stats were posted. I don't feel like looking for it but if and when I have time I will. Someone shared a pie chart showing how many TX districts prefer abstinence only or abstinence emphasized and it was damn high. 
