"On the Effects of Sex Education"

Health Education, 16(5), (1984, October-November) pp. 8-10.

The basic conclusion of "On the Effects of Sex Education: A Response to Those Who Would Say It Promotes Teenage Pregnancy" is that current models of sex education in American schools are being criticized unfairly because different criteria of evaluation are applied indiscriminately.

The basic approach to knowledge employed by author Daniel D. Adame is that of reactive comparison. The author utilizes the points of controversy employed by critics of sex education in public schools. In generalized terms, Adame compares those critics' expectations with other branches of education to illustrate his point: that it is unfair to judge sex education programs on a higher standard than on other education programs.

Adame uses this approach to knowledge, it is fairly obvious, because the type of criticism he is addressing is characterized not so much by reasoned analysis as by a moralistic generality that sex education promotes teen pregnancy. To counter such a critique, the author probably felt, it would be necessary to take the critics' own standards and apply them to other programs - thus illustrating the unfairness of the critics' approach to the issue of sex education in public schools.

The article was not a research study, beyond employing general learning curves, behavior and pedagogic

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f measurement technology. This may be the simple result of space limitations, or flaws in the research. A SUMMARY: In "Sex Education in Rural Churches," author Fred R. Isberner and an evaluation team under his supervision set out to describe a program they observed for the journal Human Services in the Rural Environment. The focus of the research article was necessarily narrow because the intended audience will be evaluating only matters concerning rural human service delivery, and not the large-scale concerns of the national dialogue on the subject, except where the two overlap. One common characteristic of the intended audience and the writer is that both operate on the basic assumption that human services administration is a necessary government activity. This, in itself, is not a criticism of that position, but must be taken into account when evaluating Isberner's conclusions: they represent a bureaucratic frame-of-reference. As the focus of study, Isberner describes a rural teenage pregnancy program entitled "OCTOPUS" - Open Communication Teens or Parents Understanding Sexuality. Obviously the name of the program was stretched to fit the acronym, in itself a telling trait. Isberner is not interested in commenting
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Some common words found in the essay are:
Roberta Weiner, Karen Pittman, Jan Trost, Theriot Bruce, Educational Review, Exceptional Children, Library Journal, Contemporary Issues, Fred Isberner, Sex Education, sex education, teen pregnancy, teenage pregnancy, approach knowledge, education programs, research study, family life, sex education programs, special education, sex education literature, education literature, mentally disabled, school sex education, teen pregnancy rates, rising teen pregnancy,
Approximate Word count = 9855
Approximate Pages = 39 (250 words per page)

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