DARE to compair

In my edu. class today we discussed the needs of children "at risk". The list is long like low income, single parent, GLBT, teen suicide rate and drug use. The issue was raised about teen pregnancy rates and how if the school take any government money the teachers must teach abstinence in the class rooms. Health education could not talk about safe sex or the use of any contraceptives. This stems from the fear that talking about such thing would increase teen sex and as a result would increase teen pregnancy and increase sexually transmitted deceases. This started a debate with the majority of the class in support of sex ed. classes to include all of the for mentioned as well as handing out condoms and birth control pills in school.



The next topic was drug use among teens. With an increase in teen drug use the drug awareness program D.A.R.E was dropped from schools. Some of the reasons for the removal of the program were the increased knowledge the students received made drugs more accessible and an increased curiosity leading to greater experiment with drugs. Including one student in class to say "D.A.R.E. was a joke."



To me this seems like a contradiction. More info is good for sex ed. and bad for drug use. The pregnancy rates have gone down in resent years. And drug use as gone up. Maybe the two are not connected at all. I just found it interesting that more information or less information can be justified among the same people. I think that emotion plays a larger roll in making the right decisions than most people want to admit.