Most of the issues we face today have come up before, and maybe never went away. Gun violence is hardly a recent thing. Bullying and teen pregnancy are not new. Problems do seem to ebb and flow in seriousness and/or in the amount of media attention they get.
This post is a modest proposal that we figure out what works and doesn't work to address a specific problem. Want to do something about rising teen pregnancy? Find out what other communities have done? Want to know if a certain policy idea is a good idea? Look at what has been tried before.
This is where a good literature review of a subject has to be done. What programs have been tried in what situations, and what were the results? Once the range of effective options, if there's more than one, becomes apparent we can choose what to do with more knowledge. Values can come into play here. This program would work, but is it a good fit for our values? What you want to avoid doing at all costs is pushing an idea that will probably fail but is consistent with local values.
Is teen pregnancy a concern at the moment? Abstinence-only sex education is the answer. Teens are too young to have sex anyway. The Bible says that sex outside of marriage is a sin. This sort of thinking leads to implementing programs that will not work and cost money. Time and money that can be dedicated to something useful are wasted because of opinion (teens are too young to have sex) and ideology (Christian values drive policy decisions).
No comments:
Post a Comment