TIME: Almanac 1993/TIME Almanac 1993.iso/time/012191/0121120.000

Text File | 1992-08-28 | 7.0 KB | 145 lines

                                                                                EDUCATION, Page 66

Better Safe Than Sorry?


The notion of handing out condoms in the nation's high schools
is gaining adherents -- and attracting vociferous opposition

By SUSAN TIFFT -- With reporting by Katherine L. Mihok/New York
and James Willwerth/Los Angeles


    Angry parents, politicians and clergy gathered on the steps
of New York's city hall last week amid placards that demanded
STOP FERNANDEZ FROM TEACHING OUR KIDS GAY SEX and DUMP KING
CONDOM FERNANDEZ. What schools chancellor Joseph Fernandez is
doing, warned Monsignor John Woolsey of New York's Roman
Catholic Archdiocese, amounts to a "ratification of sexual
promiscuity." Said outraged parent John Murnane: "Fernandez is
insulting our children by telling them they cannot be educated
as to what is right."

    The indignant rally was a dress rehearsal for a bigger
confrontation this week, when the New York City board of
education is scheduled to hold a public hearing on Fernandez's
proposal to make condoms freely available in the city's 120
public high schools as part of the battle against AIDS. If the
plan is approved, New York City's will become the first school
system in the nation to provide condoms on an unrestricted
basis -- without fees, parental consent or counseling
requirements. Fernandez's own family is divided over the issue.
"My wife doesn't agree with me," he says.

    New York City is the biggest battlefront, but the war over
condom distribution in schools is spreading across the country.
One high school in Cambridge, Mass., three in Chicago, three
in Los Angeles and one in Miami already dispense the devices
to students through in-school health clinics, if parents give
their consent. Sharon Pratt Dixon, the newly inaugurated mayor
of Washington, backed school-based condom programs during her
election campaign, provided students receive instruction in
human reproduction and safe-sex practices.

    But in most places, the idea has met with anger, outrage --
and defeat. Last fall a proposal in rural Talbot County, Md.,
to make condoms available in high schools failed to pass the
school board by just one vote. In prosperous Marin County,
Calif., Tamalpais High School abandoned a plan for condom
distribution after a coalition of pro-life supporters and
parents filed suit to stop it. Los Angeles' pilot
reproductive-health project overcame vigorous opposition only
when the city agreed to a parental-consent feature; about 75%
of parents at the three participating schools have acceded.

    The current debate is the result of a grim trend: the
increasing incidence of AIDS among adolescents. Of the 157,525
cases reported to the Centers for Disease Control through
November 1990, 615 involve 13- to 19-year-olds -- 154 more than
11 months earlier. That total understates the gravity of the
problem. Since more than a fifth of all AIDS victims in the
U.S. are in their 20s and the incubation period for the disease
can be as long as 10 years, most of the older age group
probably became infected as teenagers.

    Nowhere is the challenge more grave than in New York City,
which accounts for just 3% of the nation's 13- to 21-year-olds,
but harbors 20% of all reported AIDS cases in that age group.
It was the sheer size of the problem that prompted Fernandez
to suggest the free-condom idea as part of an expanded
AIDS-education program for the city's 261,000 high school
students. Under the plan, staff volunteers at each school would
hand out condoms, along with a booklet explaining their use,
to every student who wants them. Sex counseling would be
available but would not be required, for fear it would deter
students from seeking protection.

    One of the standard objections raised is that the ready
availability of condoms will only encourage teenagers to have
sex. "This gives a stamp of approval to something we feel is
immoral and unhealthy," says Rabbi Abraham Hecht, president of
the Rabbinical Alliance of America. Some parents resent the
loss of control over their child's decision; others think the
sagging school system could put its dollars to better use. "The
chancellor's primary mission is education," insists John Hale,
a former member of the New York State board of social welfare.
"He's not the health department."

    Critics also argue that condoms, which can have a failure
rate of between 10% and 15%, are not the best protection
against AIDS. Human Life International, a Maryland-based
Christian sexuality-education group, has vowed to sue the New
York City board of education if any student gets pregnant or
contracts a sexually transmitted disease while using a
school-supplied condom. The alternative that schools should be
promoting, critics argue, is chastity.

    There is little evidence, however, that sexual abstinence
is an attractive option for students. Almost all existing sex-
and AIDS-education classes stress chastity, yet half the
nation's high school girls are sexually active; 16% have had
four or more partners. In New York City 80% of all youngsters
have had sex by age 19. "To call abstinence a fantasy is to
stretch even the idea of fantasy," says Steve Anderson, an
English teacher at Manhattan's Seward Park High School, who last
year taught a student who had lost both her parents and a
brother to AIDS. Agrees Debra Haffner, executive director of
the Sex Information and Education Council of the U.S.: "It's
immoral to say `Just say no or die.'"

    Supporters of the Fernandez plan argue that although condoms
are available in drugstores, many teenagers do not use them
properly or consistently. That makes it necessary for schools
to step in to safeguard the public's health and that of their
charges. Parental consent, boosters say, is desirable but
unrealistic. "I don't know anyone whose children consulted with
them before they had sex," says Caesar Previdi, principal of
Manhattan's Martin Luther King Jr. High School. At Jordan High
School in the Watts section of Los Angeles, teens are trained
to counsel one another on sexual issues, precisely because
adult advice is so often shunned.

    In fact, many parents seem relieved to have the issue taken
out of their hands. A Gallup poll for the daily New York
Newsday found that 54% of parents with children in the New York
City public schools approve of the condom plan. There is little
opposition from students. "This isn't telling us to be sexually
active," argues Mike Hurdle, 17, a senior at Queens' Andrew
Jackson High School. "It's just saying, if you are, you should
be protected."

    The New York City condom initiative will go before the board
of education for a vote on Jan. 23. So far, only two of seven
members have said they firmly oppose the plan. But as the
commotion concerning high schools spreads across the country,
another, even more controversial battle may be shaping up.
According to many experts, there is a growing need to make
condoms available in junior high schools, where student sexual
activity is on the rise.