2012 Platform of Texas GOP rejects teaching critical thinking skills

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A 2011 report by the Department of Health and Human Services seemed to indicate that teen sexual abstinence was on the rise, puzzlingly.

Source: http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2011/03/03/AR2011030302877.html?hpid=topnews&sid=ST2011030302897

Study: http://www.cdc.gov/nchs/data/nhsr/nhsr036.pdf

 

And that's not at all what I was suggesting. My point is that regardless of which facts you chose to teach children, some will end up having sex. I find it hard to believe that some (nevermind most) teenagers decide to start having sex (or abstain from sex) because of what they learned in sex ed.

Most people are going to have sex eventually. My beef with an abstinence only approach is that you are counting on it being 100% effective, which is foolhardy. There's no backup plan to prevent pregnancies or STDs if abstinence fails. I would much prefer that kids who do decide to have sex will do so safely, rather than never having learned about things like condom use. I mean you're asking kids to not have sex from the time they become sexually mature, to the time they get married. That's likely a decade, if not more, for most people. Of course that's not going to work! I know I wouldn't be a happy camper if I couldn't have sex for 10 years, so why would we expect teens with raging hormones to deal well with that?

It's not go for it! oingo boingo baby! It was suggesting more of an approach, "We would rather you don't have sex, but if you decide to, at least be safe."

The puzzling part is the age range reported. They start at an age of 15, a point in most people's lives where they have not yet entered sexual activity. And they end at age 24, a point in time when most people have had at least some form of sexual activity. I do not understand at all why that specific range was reported - as if the sex life of your typical 15-year old is somehow comparable to the sex life of your typical 24-year old. Hell, when I was 15, I didn't even have a sex life.

Or to put in another way, both surveys indicate that about 1/4 of those surveyed said they never had any sexual contact with another person ever. But that doesn't tell me much because of the age range. I find it impossible to believe that about 3/4 of 15-year olds had some type of sexual activity, and equally impossible to believe that 1/4 of 24-year olds had no sexual contact with another person, ever.

So I don't know really what to make of the results - unless pains were taken to ensure a similar number of people at both ends of the age range were sampled in each survey, I don't know if the apparent increase in abstinence really indicates an increase at all. For all we know, there may have been more 20-somethings in the first survey, and more teens in the second survey, which alone would skew the results towards a larger number. And I just can't get past the way they worded the question: No sexual contact with another person ever. That sounds like it could be quite likely with a 15-year old (I'm assuming kissing doesn't count as sexual contact), and quite unlikely for someene who's 24.

 

Oh poor Aldeth, he is in for a very rude shock when his kids get older. Mrs. Snook and I have been there so I can speak from some experience. Kids start to physically mature much earlier now. Some of them as early as 12. Especially the girls. When teen snook had his Bar Mitzvah (13 years old) it was quite shocking. Some of the girls looked like little girls, but some of them looked like they were 18+. This gets even worse when they get to high school. A high school now looks like a college campus. All of the kids are physically very mature. They may actually be starting the survey too late by starting at 15.

 

Sure, they LOOK different, but I seriously doubt most 15 year olds are having sex. 15 year old boys have been trying to get laid since the beginning of time. Unless something has fundamentally shifted in the last decade or so that makes 15 year old girls more willing to put out, I still don't see it happening.

Remember, I'm not saying you aren't sexually mature at 15 - almost everyone certainly is. But there's usually a substantial time lapse (at least there was for me) from the onset of puberty to when I was having sex.

 

It's all in the study, Aldeth.

If you look at the charts toward the bottom, you can see very specific breakdowns. For vaginal intercourse -

15 year old girls: 23.2 %
15 year old boys: 20.6 %

I agree it's kind of shocking. Even more shocking is that 4.6 % of 15 year old girls have had anal sex, and 2.8 % of 15 year old boys. And 11% of 15 year old girls have had some form of same-sex sexual behavior.

If you have doubts about their methodology, they have a section where they discuss that as well. I'm not qualified to make determinations about their methods, but I tend to assume that the Department of Health and Human Services is not running around recklessly carrying out studies that don't meet the bar for typical standards of the study's kind.

You can also take your pick on ranges as far as abstinence goes ...

Females aged 15: 64.1 % abstinent
Females aged 15 - 17: 58.2 % abstinent
Females aged 15 - 19: 45 % abstinent
Females aged 15 - 24: 28.6 % abstinent

Males aged 15: 65.6 % abstinent
Males aged 15 - 17: 52.6 % abstinent
Males aged 15 - 19: 41.1 % abstinent
Males aged 15 - 24: 27.2 % abstinent

They don't seem to publish the detailed 2002 results for comparison in this study beyond the 15 - 24 age group, but I'm assuming they have access to it and have drawn their conclusions accordingly. Although it should be noted that all they actually say, as far as I can tell, is that more men and women aged 15 - 24 were abstinent when this study was done than in 2002. Regardless of the specific age breakdowns, that seems significant to me, unless you anticipate some sort of bizarre deviation in only one age group that swung the results off-kilter. But again, I'm not the one who should be crunching the numbers here.

 

I read the article not the study. It's not that I was necessarily faulting their methodology, but rather their logic in picking an age range of 15-24. But even those statistics you post don't tell the whole story, as they just give ever increasing ranges. While I would not think that approximately one in four girls had sex by the age of 15, it certainly supports my thinking that the vast majority have not.

And it still doesn't tell me much at all about the older people in the study. Of course the number will be lower, because it counts all the people from the previous row along with any new additions, but unless your math skills are far better than mine, I can't figure out for the life of me how many people were still abstinent when they reached age 24. (Certainly signifcantly less than the 28.6%/27.2% list as that's range data.) Although I'd hazard a guess that it would be a low single digit number.

So I'm not necessarily slamming the study, just asking why they chose the ranges they chose. We can see for sure that about 3/4 of girls and 4/5 of boys didn't have sex at age 15 - but how big of a contribution do those people make to the total people in the study?

Well, I can think of one unique, although by no means bizzare element that may be present in the 15-24 grouping that certainly isn't present in the 15, or 15-17 age groups. Once you go beyond 18 - and certainly once you go all the way up to 24, you are now including people that are married. It also seems self evident that if you have more 20-24 year olds in one study, that study will have a lower percentage of people who are abstinent, just because they've had more time to not be.

 

According to the tables, 15 year old girls accounted for 2,147 of the total of 20,570 females aged 15 - 24 surveyed, and 15 year boys accounted for 2,250 of the total of 21,181 males aged 15 - 24 surveyed.

The question is, how is that relevant as relates to the percentage change in that age range between 2002 and this study, assuming that the numbers surveyed were comparable? I haven't seen the 2002 study, but I'm assuming again that the Department of Health and Human Services possesses a fundamental competence as far as conducting this sort of research goes. If in 2002 they only surveyed seven 15 year old girls, for example, I suspect that any bogus sweeping conclusions based on that fact would not survive peer review.

We do know based on the tables that the total numbers surveyed were comparable (I'm looking at table 7 specifically):

2002 females aged 15 -24: 19,674
2006-2008 females aged 15 - 24: 20,570
2002 males aged 15 - 24: 20,091
2006-2008 males aged 15 - 24: 21,181

So they would have had to change their methodology significantly as far as age groups and numbers are concerned in order to misrepresent the data here for the 2006-2008 study. I don't know why they would do that and then attempt to draw bogus conclusions.

I'm just being nitpicky here , but I think that describing three out of four 15 year old girls as a vast majority is overdoing it a bit, considering that the inverse - that one in four 15 year old girls has sex - is quite shocking, imo.

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Actually I found the 2002 study. Here's the abstinence data:

Females aged 15: 63.7 % abstinent
Females aged 15 - 17: 48.6 % abstinent
Females aged 15 - 19: 35.5 % abstinent
Females aged 15 - 24: 21.9 % abstinent

Males aged 15: 56.8 % abstinent
Males aged 15 - 17: 46.8 % abstinent
Males aged 15 - 19: 36.1 % abstinent
Males aged 15 - 24: 22.6 % abstinent

And here's the 2006-2008 data I posted above for comparison:

Females aged 15: 64.1 % abstinent
Females aged 15 - 17: 58.2 % abstinent
Females aged 15 - 19: 45 % abstinent
Females aged 15 - 24: 28.6 % abstinent

Males aged 15: 65.6 % abstinent
Males aged 15 - 17: 52.6 % abstinent
Males aged 15 - 19: 41.1 % abstinent
Males aged 15 - 24: 27.2 % abstinent

They actually do have individual data for ages 15, 16, 17, 18, 19, 20-21, and 22-24 in the 2002 study and ages 15, 16, 17, 18-19, and 20-24 in the 2006-2008 study if you care to look it up. I won't post it here for data blindness concerns.

Fifteen year old girls surveyed in 2002: 1,819
Fifteen year old girls surveyed in 2006-2008: 2,147
Fifteen year old boys surveyed in 2002: 1,930
Fifteen year old boys surveyed in 2006-2008: 2,250

2002 females aged 15 -24: 19,674
2006-2008 females aged 15 - 24: 20,570
2002 males aged 15 - 24: 20,091
2006-2008 males aged 15 - 24: 21,181

Thus, fifteen year old girls accounted for 10.82 % of the 15 -24 age bracket in 2002 and 9.58 % of the 15 -24 age bracket in 2006-2008, and fifteen year old boys accounted for 10.41 % of the 15 - 24 age bracket in 2002 and 9.41 % of the 15 - 24 age bracket in 2006-2008. Ditto above on further stats posted here, lol.

2002 Study: http://www.cdc.gov/nchs/data/ad/ad362.pdf

 

Anal doesn't count. They still think they're virgins. I kid you not.

That actually sounds about right for number of gays. Not very surprising to me. The higher number of girls has more to do with the acceptance of girl-on-girl experimentation (as compared to boy-on-boy experimentation). I've also heard that attraction for women and girls is more based on emotion than physical -- while it's predominantly the opposite for men and boys.

 

T2, the study says that those results are for opposite-sex sexual behavior. Apparently same-sex sexual behavior is all lumped together in one category, where not surprisingly the highest rate occurs among women aged 20 - 24 years (15.8%), likely for the reasons you mentioned.

 

Not same sex???? I find it really odd that 2.8% of 15YO girls have strap-on's then....

 

I'm not quite sure why that would need to be the case, lol ... 2.8 % of 15 year old boys have delivered to a female in that fashion.

 

I took it as ... recipients.

 

I agree with you completely dmc. The thing that I don't get is that I was of the opinion that society is more sexualized now than it was when I was an adolescent some 20-25 years ago. So I'm the perplexed why this study seems to show the opposite - that MORE people are remaining abstinent now than they were 10 - never mind 20 - years ago. If the study supported our mutually shared (mis?)perception, I wouldn't be digging into this.

Although I guess that's a whole other story, isn't it? Things that conform with our worldview we take at face value, while things we don't we are highly likely to question, even when they come from very credible sources. As Gaear pointed out, this was a peer reviewed study, from a highly respected organization, they showed a breakdown of their results for all to see. There is no reason to suspect that everything wasn't on the up-and-up. And yet, here I am, picking nits, because it doesn't agree with what I think.

 

It's possible that both things are true - that society is more sexualized, and that abstinence is considered viable and is practiced more than it used to be. Maybe modern youth, because of education or whatever other influences may be at play, are a bit 'wiser' than we were as far as sex goes, even as they are more knowledgeable about things we think they shouldn't be privy to at their tender ages.

If that were the case, it may lend some practical credence to LKD's assertion that

assuming that those values are at least partly responsible for the rise in abstinence. And that ultimately this whole business with the Texas GOP may be a red herring, even if we ignore the other evidence presented here that explains what may really have been happening and just assume that they are evil hate mongers trying to promote ignorance or whatever their evil agenda might be this semester.

 

Hmm. Sex ed is taught in order to address one key issue, and that is the prevention of teen pregnancies. Abstinence only education is aimed at telling kids that, when they don't have sex they can't get pregnant. So far so good. Oddly, the states which have abstinence only education consistently are reported to have the highest teenage pregnancy rates. How can that be?

American kids according to polls frequently don't consider oral or anal sex to be sex because it doesn't involve penetrating the vagina, suggesting to me that the meaning of the term 'abstinence' is open to clintonesque interpretation. Which in turn suggests to me that there decidedly is need for sex education.

IMO relying on abstinence as a remedy to teenage hormone storms that may easily result in teenage pregnancies is IMO akin to pissing into a prairie fire in hope to extinguish the flames. This silly idea is being pushed because some prudes just can't stomach having teachers speaking with their kids about sex. It serves no purpose but to placate the prudish sensitivities of the proponents.