What if they're right?

In last Sunday's Blade [March 1, 2009], Roberta Deboer wrote a front page article on teen pregnancies in Lucas County. You may already know that Lucas County has had the highest teen pregnancy rates in all of Ohio 12 of the last 14 years.

As I read on though, the article wasn't so much about the pregnancy rates as much as it was about the reality of School Districts in Lucas County, unlike ANY of the School Districts in the counties surrounding Lucas County, have not allowed questions regarding sex to be asked.

The National Center for Disease and Prevention has a survey, administered locally across the United States called 'Youth Risk Behavior Survey'. While this survey asks a wide array of questions regarding risk behavior, for some reason the School Districts in Lucas County omit the section on sex among teens.

Now the tendency is to say; 'the School Districts have an ostrich in the sand policy'. You may be right. Every School District in Northwest Ohio seem to have no difficulty asking these questions.

Here are today's questions;

• 'Why would we want our School Districts to ask these or any questions?'
• 'If the School Districts are in possession of the answers [statistics] what do we expect them to do about it?'
• 'Among the many School Districts who have had this information, what have they done to address sexual behavior among our youth?'
• 'What if Lucas County School Districts are right?'
  

Once again we may be asking the School Districts to do more than they are designed for - clearly teen sexuality is not going away. For example, in Wood County [a county asking the sex questions] 31% of youth have had sex before they were 17 with a high percentage of those youth having multiple partners.

30 seconds is all it took me to google and find the Youth Risk Behavior Survey on line. I found the test and instructions on how to administer the test.

I think the organization in the community that is potentially the most qualified to do something with the results, is the only one that should be asking the questions. This may scare you - but the organization I'm referencing is the church.

Churches need to once again see themselves as the PRIMARY Delivery System toward and for, their communities. Imagine a world where churches as delivery systems administered the Youth Risk Behavior Survey in Lucas County - what would these same statistics look like 10 years from now? Would they be different? Potentially - yes! Because sexuality is a moral issue, not an educational issue.

Something to ponder,
Dan