Parents: Maybe they're cooler than we thought

An important theme that I had been hoping to establish throughout this series of posts was that, above all, education and the decisions of what to include in education are politically and socially motivated above all else. It seems like those priorities are a little out of whack, as my mother would say, but that is the way the system works. And, as promised earlier, we should probably talk about what I think may be one of the biggest political motivators: what the parents think.

Let's think about it, what do school's have to lose if the parent's disagree with the school's sex education policies? A whole hell of a lot. People talk, and reputation is everything. Therefore, the system lives in fear of stepping on any toes, particularly not the white, middle-class toes. (that's a whole other issue, we won't go into that just yet). However, have these schools actually looked into what parents actually think about sex education? What do they really want for their children? Support for Comprehensive Sexuality Education: Perspectives from Parents of School-Age Youth by Eisenberg et. al. (2008) will hopefully help us answer that question.

According to Eisenberg et. al. (2008), as well as Walker (2004), there is a commonly held belief that parents are in favour of the abstinence-only programs that preach abstinence as the only way to be 100% sure of safety, and does not supplement children with additional information about protection. We know from before, and Eisenberg et. al. (2008) reiterate this, that the only way to get a piece of the 80 million dollar budget is to have a program that meets the criteria of abstinence-only. So, in my mind, it makes perfect sense that this commonly held belief has turned into some sort of fact, and has remained unquestioned. However, is it fact? Or is it a myth as Walker (2004) suggested?

Eisenberg et. al. (2008) conducted a study that studied parents reactions to sex education in the state of Minnesota (shout out to my roommate Marina who is from that neck of the woods). They used phone interviews to get parents opinions on what kind of programs they would want taught in schools, what topics should be included in these programs, and at what age it should start. It also accounted for confounding factors such as religion, ethnicity, gender etc. This is what they found:

• the overwhelming majority of parents favoured the teaching of comprehensive sex education programs (89.3%) 
• support for the comprehensive programs was high across all groups and types of parents
• parents majoritarily support the inclusion of topics that have been termed controversial (i.e. abortion, sexual orientation etc.)
• the average appropriate start age was grades 6-8, with topics such as puberty being acceptable at earlier ages, and the more controversial topics, such as abortion, being seen as more acceptable in high school

Before we talk about findings, let's take into consideration that phone interviews are somewhat exclusionary: you can only get a hold of people who own phones. This means that a significant demographic of the population is missing from the survey. On the other hand, this survey saw a response rate of 63%, which, according to Eisenberg et. al. (2008), is well over the average response rate for phone interview. Also, we're only talking about the parents of Minnesota here, and may not be generalizable to the rest of the country. However, previous studies that have been conducted in the South and Eastern United States have yielded similar results. 

It seems that this commonly held belief may be a myth after all. An important finding of the article is the following, and I quote: "Most parents disagreed that CSE caused more students to have sex" (Eisenberg et. al., 2008, p.355). This is probably the thing that needed to be said the most. There is an author by the name of Michelle Fine, whose article we studied in our class. The main point of her paper was to talk about silencing in schools, meaning that she discussed the things that were not said in the classroom, things that teachers may have been afraid, or not allowed to bring up. She discussed the idea of dropping-out specifically, and the school that allowed her to conduct a field study did not even allow her to utter the word drop-out, in fear that the students would do it if it was mentioned. First of all, this is insane. Give your students a little credit, life is not a game of Simon Says. They have minds of their own after all. However, this a mentality that we have also seen in sex education. If you don't say sex, they won't get the idea. It is easy to see the connection between this mentality and the current rise of abstinence-only programs in the USA (Eisenberg et. al., 2008). Also, Eisenberg et. al. (2008) mentioned the following in their article: "A 2000 study found that almost one in four sex education teachers had been told not to teach about contraception in their sexuality units" (p.353).  We can see that there are active attempts to silence here, and this is incredibly contrary to what parents want for their children in a school environment. 

Why might this silencing exist? Why is there a discord between what parents want and what is done? Morris (2000) has already provided us with a very plausible explanation: poor pre-service teacher education in how to teach sex education. Teachers often teach what they know, and steer clear of what they don't. So if they don't know anything about sex education, or how to teach it, then how can we expect them to do it at all, let alone in an effective manner? If we want change, we need to teach these teachers how to approach controversial, emotionally charged subjects in a way that allows the classroom to remain a safe environment for everyone. 

We can pretty confidently say that parents are interested in having their children participate in comprehensive education programs, and these findings should be strengthened and taken to heart for the future development of our sex education programs. I'd like to leave you with a thought. Eisenberg et. al. (2008) state: "Interestingly, youth themselves have been asked relatively infrequently about their views on school-based sexuality education" (p.353). Why is it that the people who are experiencing the actual education are being left out of the process? Is it that they are thought to not know what is in their best interests? Are authority figures afraid of relinquishing power? What do you think? One final thing: what do you wish you would have know about sex before going off into the real world? More of this to come. See y'all soon. 

References (new)

Eisenberg, M.E., Bernat, D.H., Bearinger, L.H., Resnick, M.D., (2008). Support for Comprehensive Sexuality Education: Perspectives from Parents of School Age Youth, Journal of Adolescent Health 42, p.353-359. 

Fine, M. (1989), Silencing and Nurturing Voice in an Improbable Context: Urban Adolescents in Public School, In H.A. Giroux, P. McLaren, (Eds.), Cultural Pedagogy, The State, and Cultural Struggle, Albany, New York: State University of New York, p. 152-173.