Austin is among the Texas school districts that have recently expanded sex education, sparking fears that a new curriculum could replace the state-mandated focus on abstinence.
Austin Independent School District’s board voted to change the sex-education curriculum for 8- to 14-year-olds in October 2019. Under the new curriculum, 8-year-olds in Austin will learn the names of their body parts as well as which ones are private, empowering them to identify sexual abuse. Older students will study consent, preventing disease, gender identity and sexual identity.
Austin is not alone. The number of Texas school districts teaching about safe sex as well as abstinence rose from 4 percent to 17 percent between 2008 and 2016, according to advocacy group Texas Freedom Network. This expanded abstinence curriculum is called “abstinence-plus.”
Some conservatives in Texas are worried that children studying abstinence-plus will be more highly sexed and take risks, while others fear that more girls will get abortions, The Economist reported.
The Christian Broadcasting Network criticized the curriculum in an article on its website headlined “Texas School District Mandates Teaching Kids How to Have Anal Sex.”
Pro-life speaker Monica Leal Cline said in a YouTube video posted on Dec. 10, 2019, that expanding LGBT education in Austin might be triggering children to experience the “gender dysphoria” felt by many transgender people.
Texas law obliges educators to focus on abstinence over all other sexual activity for those in school, except for those students in school who are married. While teaching about birth control is a requirement in 18 other states, according to Planned Parenthood, Texas currently has no statewide requirement to teach about birth control.
But Texas' traditional abstinence education is not effective in meeting typical sex education goals, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention said. Teens in Texas were the most unlikely of all teens nationwide to use contraception, it said. And abstinence may be elusive, as 60 percent of Texas high-school seniors report having had sex, The Economist reported.
Austin’s sex education reform sparked controversy in Austin, but this year the discussion will move to the state level as Texas’ Board of Education will consider revising health and sex education statewide.
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