First published in The Tribune on Monday, July 14, 2008 under the byline, Young Man's View.
IN an increasingly promiscuous society, where there are escalating incidences of private and public school children having sex—in private dwellings or on school campuses—its high-time we consider making condoms obtainable at schools. The reality is that teenagers are sexually active, are daily inundated by sexually explicit material via different mediums and that abstinence is hardly practiced despite the various programmes/groupings touting self-restraint.
The availability of condoms decreases the likelihood of sexually active teenagers having unprotected sex and undoubtedly is a pragmatic approach to fighting the dispersion of sexually transmitted diseases (STDs), particularly since teenagers—with raging hormones—are rarely exert self-control or delay sexual relations until they are more mature and/or married.
What are the current statistics on how many teenagers have become pregnant or have contracted STDs/AIDS?
In the Bahamian schools, condoms should be made available as part of a comprehensive sex education program that seeks to decrease the probability of sexually transmitted diseases and avert inadvertent pregnancies, while also encompassing counseling, education, contraception and abstinence-only features.
In European countries such as the Netherlands, teenagers are provided with the edification and material means while being trained, since elementary school, about sexual relations in far-reaching sex education programmes. This is unheard of in the Bahamas, where sex and even safer-sex erudition remains taboo.
Dr Susan Blake, a member of the Department of Prevention and Community Health at George Washington University’s School of Public Health and Health Services in Washington, D.C. says that “there is a continuing need for effective HIV, STD and pregnancy prevention programs that discourage the early onset of sexual activity and encourage protection among adolescents who are already sexually active.” The Bahamas should take note!
According to the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU):
“Eighty-five percent of male teenagers and 76% of female teenagers in the United States have had sexual intercourse by the age of 19. The percentage of sexually active students increases dramatically with each year of age -- from 22% for females and 27% for males at age 15 to 51% for females and 59% for males at age 17”.
Unquestionably, based upon what I’ve been told, the statistics are similar or perhaps even higher among Bahamian teenagers.
According to the Guttmacher Institute, a leading think tank on sexual and reproductive health issues, a complete sex education program should engage both the school and the surrounding community, with condom availability not being the focal point of such a program.
Recalling a campaign in a rural South Carolina community where condoms were available through the school’s nurse, the institute’s approach then proposes that such a programme can only become reality when teachers, community leaders and peer counselors are trained in sexuality education; when some form of sex education is incorporated throughout a child’s schooling; when the media, community groups and even churches address these issues and staunchly discourage unplanned pregnancies and, when school nurses or guidance counselors inform students on family planning while also providing condoms.
If condoms were made available to students, schools with the highest rates of reported sexual activity and STDs in the student population, pregnancies and dropouts should firstly be targeted for strong sex education programmes. However, to take a broader approach, all high schools—inclusive of junior high schools but principally the senior schools—where students range in age from 15-21 and are actively engaging in sex long before the legitimate age of consent, should have sex education programmes where condoms are accessible. Studies in the US show that roughly half of all adolescents in grade nine to 12 have had sex, leaving no doubt that in our impressionist culture the figures may be similar or even more, especially since sex education does not take precedence.
In the US, prestigious medical associations such as the American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists, the American School Health Association and the National Medical Association have all endorsed making condoms available at schools as a part of comprehensive school health programmes.
Today, the Bahamas has been negatively impacted by the scourge of the HIV/AIDS viruses and other STDs via unprotected sex, with a growing number of teenagers being among the infected. Even more, the country is suffering from uneducated, reckless choices and the lack of sex education which undoubtedly has led to steadily rising instances of teenage and pre-teen pregnancy.
These days, the Princess Margaret Hospital is teeming with children having children; misguided, unwanted youngsters are terrorizing our neighborhoods; the poverty level is rising as young, minimum wage workers are hustling and “scrapping” to provide for unplanned, illegitimate children; there is a strain on the educational system as schools are overcrowded by some misbehaving miscreants and violent crime is surging due, in large part, to a failure to implement a comprehensive sex education programme which could curb the numbers of unwanted offspring and thereby reduce much of the societal pestilence we now face. Nowadays, there are a sizeable percentage of grandmothers in their 30s who are raising unruly children/grandchildren who are likely to repeat this crazed, vicious cycle.
Lately, I was disappointed to learn that a 15-year-old, ninth grade student of mine, who had just completed junior high in June with failing grades, was with child. Recent news reports have revealed a plot by several American girls who all made an idiotic pact to become pregnant by the end of the year, recklessly desiring to be unemployed teenage mothers rather than being concerned with education, a career, marriage or a stable home. The same can be said of some pregnant local teenagers who become pregnant because of a lack of sex education and in hopes of salvaging relationships, but instead end up becoming baby factories with two to five children before they are 25, receive a court ordered $20 per week child support cheque and have a stable of bastard children who all have different surnames/daddies. This is a stark contrast to Europeans, most of whom decide to wait until their late 20s or early 30s to bear children.
Amidst reports of sex on school campuses, I recently saw a video—making the rounds on the internet—of what appears to be two Bahamian students being filmed by another in a raunchy sex session. Shortly after, I was told of high school students who cannot afford condoms or are to embarrassed to ask store clerks for them and consequently resort to using unconventional contraceptives such as plastic bags or saran wrap, or as they say, going “bareback” (unprotected). School condom programmes would improve students’ acquisition of condoms and lessen the discomfiture faced when requesting condoms from behind counters at pharmacies, food stores and gas stations.
In developing a comprehensive sex education program with a condom availability aspect, schools seek the blanket consent of parents so as to cover all health services (including condom issuance), with hopes that such an approach would prevent a school would being sued and/or the impression of an encroachment on the rights of parents/guardians while still covering all healthcare issues and thus not restricting a student’s access to condoms, particularly if a parent refuses to accept the reality that their child is sexually active and wrongly fantasizes that they can prevent them by forbidding their access to condoms. Parental misjudgment such as that usually leads to a child rebelling and continuing to have sex—most likely unprotected!
Secondly, students must also be counseled—in strict confidentiality—about safe sex and how to use a condom. Of course, condoms should only be available from nurses or guidance counselors!
At present, many prominent American cities such as New York, the District of Columbia, Los Angeles, San Francisco. Seattle, Baltimore, Chicago, Dallas, Houston, and Philadelphia, among others, have made condoms available in all or nearly all the schools. According to the Western Journal of Medicine, “in New York city, public high schools are required to provide condoms and a health resource room to students.”
Locally, the ministry of education and the ministry of health should work in conjunction to develop efficient school clinics and health centres that offer students various services ranging from general treatment, health examinations and physicals, mental health evaluations, dietary guidance, substance abuse, therapy to sex education. It is preposterous for one nurse to be split between two to three schools per week and appears to be an unsafe, flippant approach to the dealing with health concerns of students/teachers.
While churchmen and even some politicians may be against making condoms available at educational institutions, possibly by asserting that the accessibility of condoms would increase sexual activity, according to a May 2003 Center for the Advancement of Health report, it does not increase activity but instead “protects those who are already sexually active from some sexually transmitted diseases.”
Jeannie Rosoff, former president of the Guttmacher Institute, rightly asserts that “certain elements like religious traditionalism militate against acceptance of condoms and other contraceptive programmes even in communities where the problem is great.” This is so true of the Bahamas!
Frankly, while sex education should be a part of a curriculum, Bahamian parents are also failing to effectively communicate with their children. With children as young as nine having sex and even bearing children, parents must stop hiding their head in the sand like an ostrich and, while teaching morals and values, inform their children about their expectations and openly discuss sex and birth control with them. At a young age, a child should be made cognizant of molestation and when someone touches them inappropriately.
In heightening students’ awareness of STDs/sex/ contraception, the Guttmacher Institute notes that in addition to a comprehensive sex education programme both the schools and the community at large must employ “abstinence groups, peer education programmes, special assemblies, media and theatrical productions, health information tables, rap sessions, health fairs, posters, contests” and firsthand accounts by teenage parents, doctors, people living with HIV/AIDS, field trips to the All Saints (AIDS) Camp and/or a hospital ward and even by creating projects and emulating the NAMES project quilt, as is done in the US.
With the increasing incidences of STDs/AIDS cases, the ministry of health should set about providing condoms to be placed in restrooms—free of charge—at service stations, restaurants, bars, clubs and during major events, all in an effort to cultivate a culture of healthy living and safe sex. A school condom availability programme would lessen sexual risk-taking, encourage students to live healthy lifestyles and serve as an inexpensive means for students to access condoms. A box of condoms is cheaper than a pack of pampers.
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