Tomorrow's Post has a very well-written, sensible article on abstinence education. The author, Deborah M. Roffman, has taught sex ed for thirty years and has written a book about it; she makes a lot of points in this story, the main one being that kids know when you're jerking them around.

After learning about a congressional report offering evidence that many widely used abstinence-only courses grossly overestimate the failure rates for condoms, the seventh-grade students at one of the schools where I teach were perplexed.

"Well, if these courses are supposed to be health education," asked one, "why would anyone want to give wrong information about something as important as preventing AIDS?" Another added, "Are they trying to tell kids not to bother using condoms when they need them because they're useless anyway?" "None of this makes sense!" said a third. "Condoms can save lives." To which another retorted, "Well, maybe it's sex they're against, not AIDS!"

Many educators and parents I work with scratch their heads, too, when they learn that hundreds of millions of federal and state dollars are being spent on abstinence-only programs, in which contraception may be mentioned only in the context of its failure rates. They'll Abstain If They're Given Good Reasons

It seems that the federally-funded programs are intended to persuade kids to adopt a certain behavior, whether or not facts are entirely accurate.

If 30 years of experience in this field has taught me one thing, it is that when talking with our children about sex, we need to make sure that we educate rather than dictate and that our approach is based on scientific evidence. Only then can we hope to arm young people against the escalating social and cultural pressures they face.

It is odd, adults don't really have any trouble understanding the mixed message of "don't have sex, but if you do, be careful." The reasoning seems kind of obvious to us. But the kids are trying to figure out what we're up to -- why tell us one thing, if you expect us to do the other?

But there is another way to counsel teenagers that I know they don't find confusing at all: "First and foremost, we love you, and we want you to be safe. The best way to be safe is to abstain. And, for people who choose not to abstain there are steps they can take to lower the risks." Teenagers don't hear that as a Do/Don't message, but as straightforward evidence of how much adults care about their well-being and about how we expect them to take these decisions very seriously.

Of course, all of us parents joke about how much our kids know already. Ah, yes, we know it, partly because we were their age once. One thing that makes sex education difficult is that kids are learning from one another already. An important part of the program is correcting some fallacies that get passed around.

The thing that gets missed in a lot of these discussions is the fact that teenage kids are not dumb. It's really not like they just take whatever they learn in school and accept it as absolute fact. Especially on a topic like sex, you know full well they are trying to figure out what our motives are -- why are you telling me this stuff? If it's because the grown-ups want all the cookies in the cookie jar for themselves, then ... duh, any reasonable kid is going to try to figure out how to get that lid open. And keeping them in the dark does create that impression.

Ms. Roffman makes a most interesting and subtle point, a distinction between abstinence and chastity:

Don't get me wrong: I think the emphasis on abstinence in recent years has gone a long way toward making it a more acceptable option for young people. There is no question in my mind that abstinence -- as in the delay or postponement of sexual intercourse -- is the prudent choice for anyone not yet ready to take on the physical, social, emotional and moral responsibilities inherent in the act of intercourse, or for anyone whose personal or religious values dictate that the proper place for this behavior is only within the context of marriage. I have yet to meet a responsible health educator who does not make these points clearly in his or her teaching.

However, the mandatory guidelines in the federal abstinence-only program reveal a very different agenda. Teachers in schools where these federal dollars are accepted are not permitted to frame abstinence or postponement as a recommended choice in the service of one's health, but as an obligatory state of being until marriage. In other words, abstinence is not to be portrayed as a means to an end (good health) but as an end in itself. The ultimate goal of the program is to promote premarital chastity rather than premarital health.

And, y'know, there's nothing wrong with that, but it doesn't belong in a school. It belongs in the family, in the church.

There is much concern in the public health community that abstinence-only programs leave those young people who ultimately choose not to abstain in a dangerous information vacuum. I see an equally dangerous moral and ethical vacuum, because they are also left without guidance on how to apply the values they have absorbed to the sexual situations in which they will find themselves. How ironic that in the name of "morality" we may diminish young people's ability to think and behave ethically.

There are a lot of nuggets of wisdom in this article, and I recommend you go read the whole thing, slowly, thoughtfully. The question of abstinence education is not black and white, it's very complicated, but if we approach it with empathy and honesty, we just might be able to get these kids of ours to adulthood safely.