SEX EDUCATION AND THE CAPE PUBLIC SCHOOLS

The Cape Girardeau Board of Education took action last week that demonstrated common sense and, in some measure, courage. In adopting a new health curriculum, the school board put in place an abstinence-based sex education program. A perfect-world scenario would find this information taught in the homes, but the board now directs schools to assume some of the responsibility ... yet doing so without moving to the extreme position of some "reality-based sex education," where condoms become learning tools. We applaud the school board for taking this position.

Further commending this action is the fact the decision was a thoroughly considered one, coming about as the result of a two-year endeavor by a committee studying a health curriculum aimed at students from kindergarten through high school. The committee rejected as a failure the type of sex education prevalent in many districts during the 1970s and 1980s, the type that teaches about contraception and sexually transmitted diseases and has not stopped the rise in teen pregnancy rates.

Unfortunately, where teen pregnancies are concerned, Cape Girardeau has not been a community to buck this grim national trend. The statistics demonstrate some fluctuation but generally show a gloomy consistency. In Cape Girardeau County, there were 170 teen pregnancies in 1990, a high point; in 1992, there was a recent low figure of 126. A recent national study showed Missouri ranks the 37th worst state for the percent of all births to single teens. The national average in 1991 was 9 percent, while the Missouri average was 10.3 percent; the state average rose 2.5 percent during the five years leading to the 1991 mark.

Not all the news is bad in this regard. While some government and school programs have flopped, many young people are taking it upon themselves to convince their peers that abstinence is acceptable behavior. A national effort called True Love Waits, in which teens make a commitment to abstain from sex until marriage, has taken root in this area. We see this as an uplifting development.

It might seem that no person would object to an abstinence-based message being transmitted to young people. Obviously, there are those who believe sex education of any type has no place in a school; while we respect that view, it seems remote in the context of a fully developed health curriculum. And let no one convince you there isn't a faction -- and it doesn't have to be much of one to stir up a tempest -- that would prefer a "safe sex" approach to the adopted type of teachings. Keep in mind that the stance taken by the local school board flies in the face of the incumbent U.S. surgeon general, who supports condom distributions in schools. Given the demeanor of the current administration and the general tenor of the times, the school board's position can be seen, at the very least, as being bold.

When former Education Secretary William Bennett spoke in Cape Girardeau in March, he made a very telling statement. "We're saturated with sex in this society," he said. "What we need are some healthy inhibitions." What the school district's program will do is send a message not unlike that one. It isn't a bury-your-head-in-the-sand approach, one that pretends teen-age pregnancy and the risk of sexually transmitted diseases don't exist. Instead, it sends a positive message to impressionable young people that it's acceptable in our society to refrain from sex. That isn't a message sent by MTV or a lot of the mass media. In showing support for an abstinence-based sex education program, the school board exhibited a real caring for the community it serves, as well as a good bit of fortitude.