Given the fact that Connecticut’s state government will only fund sexual education programs that teach abstinence only, we commend the efforts of the student-run Aids and Sexual Health Awareness group (ASHA), who offer Middletown and the surrounding area with a crucial service that the state government refuses to provide.
It is impressive that ASHA continues to teach high school students despite the inflammatory comments that they frequently receive from parents. Their work is needed more than ever: the rate of teenage pregnancies increased in 26 states over the past year. Despite the controversy sparked by sex education encompassing topics beyond abstinence, many studies have shown that abstinence-only sex education is not effective.
We are therefore disappointed with The Middletown Press’ biased reporting on the sexual education workshops that ASHA taught in Middletown this past December. The article’s minimal evidence, gathered from a few outraged parents who insisted on anonymity, sentences from ASHA’s lesson plan taken out of context, and flat-out wrong assertions about the content of the workshops, misrepresented ASHA’s workshops as inappropriate.
For example, one of the articles from The Middletown Press, published on Dec. 10, 2009, claimed that students attending one of the workshops “were reportedly asked to discuss how they feel before, during, and after sex.” Staff members from The Argus reviewed ASHA’s lesson plan and could not find mention of such an activity. The only activity description that remotely resembled the quote involved “healthy communication,” which taught students “concrete ways to say ‘no’ to sexual activities.”
These two articles are not only prime examples of dishonest reporting due to their lack of neutrality and dearth of thorough research, but they also damaged ASHA’s reputation and jeopardized all of the hard work ASHA has done in the past few months. We find it distressing that The Middletown Press engaged in such sensationalist reporting without considering the consequences that their articles would have on a student group that is working tirelessly to benefit of the community.
This is not, however, a time to lose hope. Besides volunteering for ASHA, students should talk with our political representatives about pushing for state government funding of comprehensive sexual education.
Let’s make sure that ASHA’s efforts to educate Connecticut students have not been in vain, and let’s push Connecticut legislators to fund the sexual education that high school students crucially need.
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