Rising Teen Pregnancy Rates- Lack of Education?

Teen pregnancy rates are soaring through the roof, and quite personally, I believe it is because the public school system refuses to provide Abstinence Only Education in place of Sex Education. What they fail to realize is that Abstinence Only Education is an effective way to approach teens today about sex. “Half the students learning about safe sex are now having sex, while only a third of the group that was focused on Abstinence Only Education is engaged in sex,” says Hanna Siegel of ABC news. I think if the public school system taught students the effects of premarital sex, life long consequences, and why they should wait, they would see a much more effective outcome rather than the Safe Sex Education they are currently providing. They should take the 100% effective approach, not the “only-sometimes-successful-maybe-this-will-work-maybe-not-but-we-will-teach-you-because-the-government-says-so” approach. If teens were educated on why sex at this age is wrong, not taught the "Safe Sex" method (which suggests the school condoning premarital sex) maybe we would see a decrease in teen pregnancy rates.

The publics opinion

On a website called htttp://www.gallup.com, it says,

"Do students rate the two approaches differently in terms of helping them
understand matters related to sex? Not really. Overall, 38% of teens who took
sex ed classes say these classes were "very helpful" to them, 47% say "fairly
helpful" and 14% say "not very helpful." Teens who've had a class with an
abstinence-only based approach are only slightly more likely than those who've
taken one with a comprehensive approach to say their sex education class was
"not very helpful."

Well as you can see, most teens said they were "helpful" in one way or another. So shouldn't abstinence be taught in sex education classes? If a student was in one of these classes it could change his or her mind about anything and maybe everything! I mean if they are already in sex education classes why shouldn't there be any abstinence taught in there. In my opinion, it should be taught in any class. For example you could have one sex education/abstinence class a week. It would be very helpful to people who might have had some doubts in their mind.

http://www.gallup.com/poll/15166/Teens-Sex-Education-AbstinenceOnly-SafeSex-Approach.aspx

Here is the length to the website where I got the information.