Jessica Fields interview school board members, teachers, and administrators about sexual education in the south. There were a lot of arguments between abstinence-only and abstinence-plus. However the main point everybody seemed to agree on was that their children's innocence has to be kept save. While reading this article, I found out that the majority of students in the school were black; however those arguing about the topic were white people, therefore they focused on primary whit students. Field showed that the debate fails to acknowledge the fact that the school board should be concerned about the majority of the school, which were black students. The black students in the community were the ones who most experienced the issue. They didn't realize that "girls of color and poor girls are less able than racially and economically privileged girls to avoid unwanted pregnancies or to make them go away through abortion, discreet adoption, better contraception, or more sexual agency." (Fields 568). African American student do not have the advantage that White Americans does, when it comes to education. The argument was a biased one, in the sense that because the teacher, administrators and activist were white, they only focused on what benefit the white students in the school. Therefore, Field argued that because the main problems were not being address in the society issue being presented cannot be solved.
My question are:
Who gets to decide when to have sex and when not to?
Is abstinence the right way to go, when trying to protect children?
Leave a comment