Friday, January 29, 1999

Sex ed: How much, how soon?

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Teens debate issue for Court TV show

BY EARNEST WINSTON
The Cincinnati Enquirer

        Sex education should be taught no later than the fifth grade.

        That was the viewpoint Thursday among most of the more than 100 Cincinnati teens during a town hall-style meeting at the Aronoff Center, sponsored by Court TV and Time Warner Cable.

        Most of the teens said they learned about sex from their parents or friends.

        Panelist Mimi Saylor, 16, of Norwood High School, said her first sex education was in a high school health class.

        “That's way too late,” she said.

        The dialogue featured panelists and students from several high schools, including Norwood, Princeton, Taft and Winton Woods.

        The “ABC's of Sex Education” will be featured on Your Turn, which will be televised nationally at 1 p.m. March 20 on Court TV (Channel 29).

        Teen mother Charity West, 17, said she doubts she would have become pregnant at 15 if she would have been educated about sex earlier.

        But a handful of students said learning about sex in the fifth or sixth grades is too much, too soon.

        “It was too much for me to know,” 15-year-old Cheryl Stickler said of her fifth-grade sex-ed class.

        Eric Riggs, 16, agreed, saying “people are too young” to be taught about sex in fifth or sixth grades.

        Emily Powell, 16, a panelist and teen peer counselor, drew groans from several teens when she said that oral sex is a form of sex and can result in sexually transmitted diseases.

        When the discussion turned to talk about abstinence and masturbation as forms of “safe” sex, one panelist disagreed that the subject matter had become too blunt. “It's not about being blunt,” said Sheryl Hutchins, a counselor with AIDS Volunteers of Cincinnati. “We do believe that knowledge is power. We're just giving the information.”

        Ms. Hutchins said it's important to provide teens “scientific facts” so they can make informed decisions about sex.

        Jonathan Schroer, a teen activist for safe sex and sex education, was among a handful of people who favored abstinence as the best means of avoiding diseases and pregnancy.

        One 16-year-old made many gasp when he told moderator Carol Randolph that he has fathered five children.

        Anthony Barrow said condoms aren't for him, and with them, sex doesn't feel “pure.”

        Briefly discussed was how the Ohio Department of Education and the Ohio Department of Health have worked on a proposed Ohio Model Competency-Based Program in Health and Physical Education.

        It is a comprehensive sex education curriculum the groups want to institutionalize eventually in all public schools, said Cincinnati Enquirer deputy editorial page editor Linda Cagnetti, one of the panelists.

        She said the proposal is “short on abstinence.”

        Amy McMahon, executive director of Social Health Education, a nonprofit agency that provides sex education to schools, said schools “tend to err on the side of caution” when sex education is involved.

       

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