Sex education: ‘More than mechanics’

Press, 29 January 1986, Page 12

Sex education: ‘More than mechanics’

TINA SUSMAN, NZPA-AP,

By

in California

Last March, counsellors at San Marcos High School shocked parents and embarrassed students by reporting that 150 of the school’s 692 girls, almost one of every five, had become pregnant in the previous school year. The figure, based on pregnancies reported to counsellors by students, sent school officials scrambling for solutions to a problem faced by schools and families across the nation.

Each year almost a million teenagers become pregnant in the United States, 80 per cent of them unmarried.

Many teenage pregnancies end in abortion, but in 1983, the last year for which national statistics are available, 261,260 babies were bom to women 15 to 19 years old. San Marcos High School has been joined by other schools trying to deal with the problem. Schools in Chicago, Dallas, New York City, and San Francisco have set up family planning clinics to discourage student pregnancies.

Chicago’s Du Sable High School began its clinic after officials reported that one of every three girls at the school became pregnant in 1984. “The only thing unusual about us is that we came out and admitted it first,” the San Marcos High School principal, Wes

Walsvick, said. Two months after the pregnancy report was released, the San Marcos School Board instituted a mandatory, three-tiered course of study for ninthgraders. For the first time, it incorporated the emotional and physical aspects of sex education. The major curriculum change was adding a course called “decisionmaking" that focuses on the whys and what-ifs of sex, rather than the hows. “We ... found we were covering the mechanics in science classes,” said Monica Weatherholt, who teaches the class. “But...

we lost sight of what we’re really trying to do. We’re treating them like students, and not preparing them for life.

“Sex education is more than mechanics. It’s human responsibility, as well.”

Students now read new textbooks, “Choices for Girls” and "Challenges for Boys.” Thick workbooks have fictitious, first-per-son accounts of unplanned pregnancies and early marriages, followed by essay questions. The goal, Monica Weatherholt said, is to make students think twice about doing things that might have long-reaching, negative consequences. The class includes sections on drugs, careers and other issues facing students, but she said the

big difference was that it allowed teachers to discuss sex questions that were previously off limits. “It’s like an entire generation of kids got (the physical) part of the story, but they didn’t get the responsibility part of sex,” Monica Weatherholt said.

The physical side of sex is covered in a biology course taught by John Morrello.

“It used to be I’d have a big box in front of class, and anyone with a question about sex could drop it in and not be embarrassed,” John Morrello said with a laugh. “But now, when it comes to the reproductive system, we go into as much depth and detail as possible.” The other part of students’ sex education includes a class entitled “health and safety,” aimed at improving students’ self-esteem. Areas of study include dating, stages of love, the sex drive, and engagements and marriage. The updated curriculum wasn’t approved without some controversy. For the most part, however, he said the curriculum had caused less fuss than the publicity about

the pregnancy rate.

Brian Cole, a senior, said many felt San Marcos was being made a scapegoat for a problem common throughout the nation’s schools.

Chicago’s Du Sable High School has installed a free, full-service clinic, where doctors dispense birth control pills and condoms along with aspirin and bandages.

Students must have written parental permission to consult the . clinic. Only one in four has come to the clinic for birth control devices.

Opponents say the school should not be in the business of dispensing contraceptives, but supporters respond there is a crying need for such a clinic on Chicago’s south side, where 70 per cent of the people live in poverty, infant mortality is almost twice the state average of 12 per thousand, and the school dropout rate is nearly 60 per cent A San Marcos High School counsellor, Lois Richmond, said only seven girls have reported being pregnant in the present school year, which began in September and ends in June.

“That’s substantially lower than last year,” she said. "We want to think it’s because of the new classes. Of course, it may not be that — it may be that they’re not telling us any more.”