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Feb 8, 2008 12:37 am US/Pacific
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Inappropriate Sex Ed. In Calif. Public Schools?
(CBS 5)
Renee Walker wants the best for her son Jesse, so when his Concord middle school offered a sex education program, she was eager to sign the consent form.
"I was completely comfortable and actually wanted him to learn about contraception and condoms," said Walker.
But then she discovered something that concerned her.
"We soon found out that he had not learned anything about puberty, prevention, contraception," said Walker.
"The only thing I ever heard about a condom is that it breaks," said Jesse.
After some digging, Walker was shocked to find that Jesse's program was actually being taught by an anti-abortion evangelical group with questionable health credentials. Because of her discovery, the program is no longer taught in Concord public schools, but she can't believe it ever was.
"I do think parents are being misled," said Walker.
But that's not supposed to happen in California, where the law clearly states that sex education in public schools must provide all the accurate information kids need to protect themselves against unwanted pregnancy and diseases, especially HIV.
But CBS 5 Investigates has discovered that outside groups are making their way into schools to teach "abstinence only until marriage"—sometimes violating state law, and, according to public health officials, putting children at risk who do have sex.
Take, for example, the sex education curriculum taught at junior high schools in Fremont—the fourth largest school district in the Bay Area. Fremont's curriculum was developed several years ago with the help of a group called "Await and Find." The group's founder is Dr. Angela Griffiths, a chiropractor.
Fremont officials told CBS 5 that they were expecting Angela Griffiths and Await and Find to help them put together a comprehensive program that meets state guidelines—teaching self-esteem strategies, reproductive health, and statistics on contraception.
But researcher Petra Jerman found something different when she examined Fremont's sex-ed curriculum for the Public Health Institute.
"It's quite obvious they're an abstinence-only curriculum," said Jerman. "It's to scare kids into abstinence." Scaring them, she said, with medical information that's sometimes inaccurate or deceptive.
For instance, she pointed to a chart from the Fremont curriculum purporting to give the failure rates of contraceptives. According to the chart, even when used consistently and correctly, condoms fail to protect against pregnancy 12 to 16 percent of the time.
"That's not true," said Jerman. "It's only 2 percent. It's [a] big difference."
We showed that chart to Sharla Smith who monitors sex education programs for the California Board of Education.
"This number, actually, is not accurate," said Smith, pointing out that the chart is also missing other crucial information. For example, the California education code requires teachers to show the success rates of contraceptives over the failure rates. "So right away," says Smith, "there's one tenet of the law that is not covered in this chart."
When we took what we found to Fremont's District Director, Dennis Brown, he said, "I think the implication is that they're being deceived. And I don't ever want anyone to be deceived."
So how could that happen? CBS 5 has learned that Await and Find, which developed Fremont's curriculum, has received millions of dollars in federal grants to promote abstinence-only-until-marriage programs—despite the fact that California has rejected the federal guidelines as being medically inaccurate and ineffective in protecting teen's sexual health.
"I have encountered these groups coming into California's public schools," said Smith. "That is one of the significant issues in school districts, is medically inaccurate information."
So what did Angela Griffiths of Await and Find have to say? She said her program does follow state law, but she refused to talk about her work on camera. However in a 2002 speech at a federal abstinence-only grant conference, she had this to say: "The government in California may not support abstinence, but the parents and the students and the school districts do, and they cannot stop asking for more."
In fact, California law does require students to learn that abstinence is the only 100% effective way to prevent pregnancy or sexually transmitted diseases. But public schools are not supposed to base their curriculum on scare tactics. Which prompted CBS 5 investigative reporter Anna Werner to ask health researcher Petra Jerman, "Some parents might say, 'Hey, if you can scare my kids into not having sex, I don't care how you do it? If it works, it works for me.'"
"Yeah, unfortunately they might not stay scared for long," says Jerman. "So when they're no longer scared and they do try to have sex and they don't use condoms, there's a danger they might get infected with chlamydia, gonorrhea, or even worse, HIV."
(© MMVIII, CBS Broadcasting Inc. All Rights Reserved.)