The battle over sex education in the United States continues, with some parents of students at a New Jersey high school challenging a programme that uses peer instructors. School district administrators say that New Jersey law requires them to teach a comprehensive class that addresses abstinence, safe sex, dating violence, HIV-AIDS, and how alcohol and drugs affect sexual decision-making. But one of the objectors says her 14-year-old son was uncomfortable with a session in which a student taught the class how to put on a condom, using a banana. "Do you want a 16-year-old boy teaching your 14-year-old daughter" how to do this? asked Lisa Westerman.
When she asked to look at the programme, Clearview Regional High School gave this mother the 900-page Teen PEP (Prevention Education Program) instructors' manual, but said that it taught only parts of the curriculum. Families considering whether to let their children attend don't know what's in and what's out, she said.
Last year there 244 disputes over sex education across the country, up from 204 in 2006, according to the lobby group the Sex Information and Education Council of the US. Programmes limited to teaching abstinence until marriage and not promoting contraception have been popular in many states, which receive federal funding for them. A further $141 million dollars is available for this year, but some states are forfeiting the money and reverting to so-called comprehensive sex-ed on the pretext that abstinence courses have been proved ineffective.
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