Richard Bernstein has a piece in today’s New York Times where he interviews three teenaged girls in the eastern German town of Hohenwarthe. These girls represent the new generation that were born after the reunification, and therefore never knew life in old DDR. Bernstein attends their Jugendweihe ceremony – a sort of secular rite of passage for adolescents and a carry-over from the DDR days:
JUGENDWEIHE today is a variation on the 19th-century German
tradition of secular humanism, and it is valued by nonreligious parents
as a kind of educational supplement. Parents pay about $100 to the
Jugendweihe Association, which organizes a host of events, like weekend
trips to London or Paris. There are lectures on safe sex, pregnancy and
love, and, for girls, visits to a gynecologist. There are fashion
shows, counseling on hair-styling, nutrition, even body piercing.Then
there is the actual ceremony, which, for Marleen, Anna and Sarah, came
on a blustery Saturday in the airy auditorium of the Town Hall in Burg
bei Magdeburg. While their parents and grandparents looked on, the
girls were called to the stage, given a yellow rose and a handshake,
and a copy of a Jugendweihe book, a sort of single-volume encyclopedia."I was moved," Anna said, "when they said that childhood was over, and I’d have to take more responsibility for my life."
I had read about this as part of East German culture, but I was not aware that it still was being practiced today. I think it’s a great idea – giving kids some practical instruction and celebrating their transition to adulthood. Of course, it could never happen in the United States. Telling kids about safe sex and pregnancy -and then, God forbid, taking girls to a gynecologist – could mean a prison sentence in Red State America. No, in the America of James Dobson the only acceptable instruction concerning sex for teenagers is abstinence, which is why Texas leads the nation in teenaged pregnancy.
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There is no doubt that the US has a huge problem with teen pregnancy. There is certainly an honest discussion about what should be the main topic for teenage sexual education; abstinence or safety. We in America are struggling with this debate as well.
Abstinence education really just recently became part of the dialogue here. These types of programs began around 1997 (federal funds were first appropriated for this in 1996), whereas “safe sex” programs have been around since the sexual revolution days of the late 1960s and 1970s, and even before. Most parents in the US support comprehensive education that includes BOTH elements of abstinence and basic contraception.
Your assertion “Telling kids about safe sex and pregnancy -and then, God forbid, taking girls to a gynecologist – could mean a prison sentence in Red State America” is just not factual, and you surely know it. Planned Parenthood of Texas has been in existence for nearly 60 years. Even today, the federal government spends 12 times as much money on contraception as it does on abstinence.
While it certainly true that teen pregancy here in the US is much higher that it is in most of Western Europe, the low birth rates there are also causing major problems. The rate in the US remains roughly the same as it was in 1975. This is not true in Germany where the birth rates seem to be lower than even the death rate. http://www.infoplease.com/ipa/A0004395.html This, in concert with a generally poor economy and plentiful social programs, will make it nearly impossible for the working-aged people in Germany right now to enjoy similar programs when they are ready to retire.
Kuch –
The Texas State Board of Ed. has approved only textbooks that discuss abstinence as the ONLY way for teens to avoid STDs and pregnancey. You can read more about is here:
http://www.salon.com/mwt/feature/2004/11/10/textbooks/
“This is sad for Texas teens,” said Samantha Smoot, president of the Texas Freedom Network, an advocacy group that calls itself “a mainstream voice to counter the religious right.” Smoot estimates that 4 million teenagers will use the books over the 10-year period for which they were approved. Those teens, she says, “will rely on these textbooks for information that is accurate and up-to-date. Instead of doing the responsible thing and providing high school students with lifesaving information about sex and health, the State Board of Education has left them to fend for themselves and get information from each other and sources like the Internet and MTV.”