The Bell Curve -- Joseph N. Bell

Two recent Orange County studies have put Newport-Mesa school

officials on alert. What they do with the results of these studies may

well open a can of educational worms.

First came a quite remarkable survey conducted by a group of 15 Santa

Ana teens who got tired of seeing their friends get pregnant and drop out

of school. Funded by a grant from the California Wellness Foundation and

the support of Campfire USA, these determined young people volunteered

their time for 18 months to survey fellow students about their sex

habits, as well as parents and teachers on what they would like to see

taught about sex in public schools.

The results said loud and clear that abstinence-focused sex education

isn’t working. As one of the teen surveyors put it to a Los Angeles Times

reporter: “We want our schools to teach contraception and how to deal

with relationships. Students know they should be getting birth control,

but they don’t know how to get it or how to use it.”

Several months later, another survey, even closer to home, by the

California Department of Health Services found that the southern region

of Costa Mesa had 91 pregnancies per 1,000 teenage girls, almost twice

the average for both Orange County and the state of California. A

parallel study by Planned Parenthood found that Latina youths in Orange

County are sexually active earlier and more frequently (44% of Latino

males by age 14 and 35% of Latinas by age 15) than average U.S. teens.

These studies took place in the aftermath of U.S. Surgeon Gen. David

Satcher’s report on the nation’s sexual health in which he strongly urged

sex education that would inform public school students about birth

control, a position echoed by Secretary of State Colin Powell and --

according to a Kaiser Family Foundation Study -- about two-thirds of

parents surveyed.

There are other numbers, pointing to the same conclusions, but that’s

enough to wonder what use the people who run the Newport-Mesa schools

plan to make of this information. I asked that question of Supt. Robert

Barbot and the school board’s president, Judy Franco. And I got educated

first.

Sex education in Newport-Mesa schools, I was told, is uniform

throughout the district. It is taught as a regular segment of the

10th-grade health program. When a student signs up for this class, a

letter goes home describing the content and materials to be used. At the

bottom is a form parents must sign requesting the class for their child.

This letter must be on file before the child is enrolled. Barbot told me

that 90% to 95% of parents who receive this letter make such a request.

The sex education parameters in California public schools are spelled

out in legislation passed more than a decade ago that sets up 11

conditions for the curriculum. Two of these conditions are especially

controversial. The curriculum must “stress” -- but is not limited to --

abstinence. And it must “teach honor and respect for monogamous

heterosexual marriage” -- a gratuitous shot at gay students.

So within such restrictions, what steps are being contemplated in the

Newport-Mesa Unified School District for dealing with the problems raised

by the studies described above?

Barbot said: “We think it’s important what the studies don’t say. We

believe that the number of pregnancies is understated, and that it is

certainly not totally a Latina problem. Our curriculum isn’t 100%

abstinence, and we believe there’s a pattern here that we need to

understand so we can offer better quality programs to get to the problem

issues. We also need to cooperate with other public and private agencies.

The bottom line is that we have a lot of ladies who need our help.”

Franco pretty much echoed these views while stressing that

Newport-Mesa enrolls sex education students only at the request of their

parents. She added that “we haven’t yet looked at these studies as a

board, but when we do there is sure to be controversy because this issue

brings out the people who strongly believe in abstinence-only education

-- for everyone.”

Franco touches on two critical issues. First, no local child is

required to take a sex education class. And, second, those of us who

object to teaching abstinence exclusively aren’t putting down the virtues

of premarital abstinence but rather pointing out that in a nation where

teenage birth rates are higher than any other industrialized society and

four out of five teens have had sexual intercourse by age 19, abstinence

is light years away from reality. It is a surrealistic goal, not a

remedy. These kids need factual information. Anything less is a

disservice to them.

The abstinence troops are a classic example of a small minority that

has managed to impose its moralistic absolutes on an indifferent society.

They’ll be out in force if our school officials choose to tackle this

issue. Maybe it’s time for the other side to show up.

* JOSEPH N. BELL is a resident of Santa Ana Heights. His column

appears Thursdays.