As if it were not enough that nine girls and young women in upstate New York are now infected with the virus that causes AIDS, former Surgeon General Joycelyn Elders last week blamed the Chautauqua County, N.Y., tragedy on school officials' not being explicit enough with sex-ed. This is no joke: In a speech at the National Press Club on the occasion of her being honored by the manufacturer of the controversial birth-control drug Depo-Provera, Dr. Elders said condoms should have been available "on every corner, so all you'd have to do is reach in and pick them up."
Reach in and pick them up is almost precisely what 20-year-old Nushawn Williams is alleged to have done to 28 area girls, ranging in age from 13 to 24, by offering them drugs in exchange for sex. Contrary to Dr. Elders, the New York school district where most of the girls received their sex education is in fact on the cutting edge of explicit sex-ed; officials boast that their program won national awards for its "comprehensive" approach.
School officials say sex-ed begins in the fifth grade and that 7-year-olds are told how HIV is transmitted. A USA Today article quoted Jamestown High School principal Terry Redman explaining that in the entire two-week "age-appropriate" sex course, "You might spend the first 20 minutes on abstinence. It's fairly straightforward. You do it and move on, and sometimes it's forgotten."
Sometimes? In an emergency school assembly called in the wake of the sex-for-drugs tragedy, the newspaper reported one high-school senior took a microphone and to "scattered applause" he complained, "This [assembly] is the first time anyone's said anything about abstinence."
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Issue: "Forbes: Right on the money"
November 08, 1997
Evolved