Quote:
Originally Posted by nguirado
If sex education hasn't been the cause, it certainly hasn't been the cure.
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The people who want to ban video games, when faced with the disturbing but true fact that youth violence has declined as the playing of video games has increased, answer "well, it would have gone down more if they weren't playing those awful games!" So, without a controlled study, it's impossible to say that sex education has
not prevented even greater changes in American society than currently exist.
The closest thing we have to a controlled study is comparisons of abstinence-only education versus comprehensive education, and those comparisons have shown that abstinence-only leads to equal or higher pregnancy rates, higher STD rates, and earlier marriage (not to mention a lot of sex in ways that would make a religious moralist cringe). That tends to suggest that it doesn't work very well, and by extension, that more comprehensive sex education has had some effect in reducing those things. This indicates that it has, in fact, been more of a cure than a cause -- that is, that the problem stems from some other source, and sex ed has helped mitigate it.
As for Australia: the home of the Great Firewall of Australia, yes? The place where the pocket knife I carry would be illegal, despite its years of service as a simple tool, because someone might use it as a weapon (what's going to happen if someone stabs someone else with a screwdriver?). The place where various games, movies, and books aren't
allowed, for
anyone, because the moralists think they're eee-vil. The place with land use laws mandating deforestation. And, given their treatment of the aborigines, the place with
no grounds to tell the rest of the world what is right and what is wrong. Get off that high horse, because it's made of withered bones.