With President Obama’s 2010 budget set to cut all funds for abstinence-only sex-ed programs, Newsweek reports on the varied approaches these programs will take as financial support vanishes.

The Future of Abstinence” chronicles the history of the abstinence movement since 1996, showing that some programs were entirely “abstinence-only” while others changed into a hybrid of abstinence and comprehensive sex education (explanation of contraception).

On one side of the debate you have what seems to be some objective data showing that abstinence-only programs do not actually change the sexual behavior of teens:

By 1999, one study estimated a third of American students were receiving an abstinence-only education. But as funding grew, so did a body of research showing that abstinence didn’t change the sexual behaviors of students; pregnancy and STD rates did not go down, the age of initial sexual activity did not go up. “Each evaluation came along … and each showed it didn’t work,” says Santelli. The articles appeared in peer-reviewed journals, many in the Journal of Adolescent Health, and in government-commissioned reviews. In 2007, a federally funded study of four abstinence programs found its students no more likely to abstain than those in a comprehensive program.

On the other hand, a Christian understands sexuality as being more than just the physical act. Therefore, the “if you are going to do it, use a condom” teaching seems like setting up teens for failure from the start:

But many of the abstinence advocates NEWSWEEK talked to thought such compromises were untenable, that they could not teach students to remain abstinent until marriage while demonstrating how to use condoms. “If the funding is for a different worldview, one that says you should give condoms to kids, that’s not my belief system,” says Unruh. “I think it’s very harmful.” She and others say it’s a question of morals and values, which is not an area for compromise. “Our program indicates that sex is more than physical. It’s emotional. There’s a lot of different aspects,” says Scott Phelps, who directs A&M Partnership, an Illinois-based provider of abstinence-only curriculums. The group has a federal grant that expires in 2013. “If I’m teaching all of that, and then I’m teaching contraception, what is contraception going to do for all those consequences? It would be sort of nonsensical.”

There is a lot to think about here: public policy & federal funding, sexual ethics, adolescence. What is a biblical Christian response? How does a gospel-centered understanding of sexuality work alongside the realities of public policy?

There may be hope yet. Students at Princeton University have formed an organization called The Anscombe Society, which, according to the mission statement on its website, is “dedicated to affirming the importance of the family, marriage, and a proper understanding for the role of sex and sexuality.”

Its goal is to foster an environment that values traditional marriage and a “chaste lifestyle.” Yes, you read that correctly. Students at a secular Ivy League university have formed, of their own free will, a group promoting chastity!

The Anscrombe Society offers support for students who share those values, as well as opportunities for the wider university community to engage in discussions with them. Just a few days ago, The Anscrombe Society hosted an event called “Ask Anscrombe Anything.” People were encouraged to attend no matter what their views, as the website made clear: “If you find some of our positions reprehensible, then come and challenge us.”

How refreshing that such a group exists in the first place, and seems willing and eager to engage in difficult discussions with those who disagree.

The group’s website also includes a link to the Love and Fidelity Network for students on other campuses interested in forming similar organizations.

Princeton is already a bright spot when it comes to offering students a change from the leftist ideologies that dominate so many of America’s institutions of higher education. In 2000, Professor Robert George founded (and still directs) the James Madison Program in American Ideals and Institutions, renowned for its traditional curriculum.

And next month, Princeton will play host to the second annual intercollegiate conference on “Sexuality, Integrity and the University,” designed to educate students in arguments that uphold traditional views of marriage, sex, and family. Professor George will be a featured speaker.

A new report–noteworthy because it meets the “gold standard” of educational study–finds some success for New York City charter schools.

Some 94 percent of New York City’s charter school students are chosen by lottery, so it creates a good randomized study: researchers can take a group of students whose parents entered them in the lottery and compare the achievement of the students who got into the charter school and the students who stayed in the public school.

The report (read it in its entirety here) looks at data from 2000 to 2008. It found that on average, a student who attended a charter school K-8 would close about 86 percent of “Scarsdale-Harlem achievement gap” in math and 66 percent of the achievement gap in English. (The “Scarsdale-Harlem achievement gap” refers to the finding that students in Scarsdale, New York — an affluent New York suburb–score on average about 35 to 40 points higher than students in inner city Harlem.)

Dr. Miriam Grossman is the author of Unprotected: A Campus Psychiatrist Reveals How Political Correctness in Her Profession Endangers Every Student, a book I highly recommend to the parent of any teenager considering college. Grossman originally wrote that book anonymously, but has since become an outspoken opponent of the culture of sexual permissiveness and the adults who promote it.

Dr. Grossman recently wrote a piece for Townhall.com about an organization called SIECUS, which stands for Sexuality Information and Education Council of the United States. Why should you care about SIECUS? Because there’s a good chance your public schools are using its materials in “health” class.

While SIECUS makes polite references to supporting parents, the information it provides and promotes does anything but.

On the SIECUS website, adolescents are directed to a downloadable mini-book called Talk About Sex. Here’s a small sampling of what teens are told:

“Every human being has basic rights. Still, adults may say and do things that make young people feel like they don’t have rights. It’s important for you to know your rights so that you can stand up for yourself when necessary. . . . At every point in your life, you can choose if and how to express your sexuality. . . . These may include decisions about . . . what sexual behaviors you want to do/when/and with whom. . . . It is up to you to determine how much risk you are willing to take. . . .”

SIECUS, as Grossman writes, is “a powerful organization that has set the standard for sex education in this country for nearly fifty years.” Its materials are used in schools throughout the country. And its influence may have reached closer than you think.

For example, in the town next door to mine, a former president of SIECUS taught at the local high school and gave a presentation to middle school parents called “Raising Sexually Healthy Young People.”

So beware of wolves in sheep’s clothing, or anything with the name SIECUS on it.

It was refreshing to hear our president, often accused of being a socialist, speak to students earlier in the week about the truly American virtue of individual responsibility. Although I am not an Obama supporter, I was impressed with the sincere empathy he showed to kids who come from difficult family settings. President Obama knows firsthand what it’s like to rise above an unfortunate home life. And he really got my attention when he said, “What you make of your education will decide nothing less than the future of this country. What you’re learning in school today will determine whether we as a nation can meet our greatest challenges in the future.”

The president went on to define those challenges as finding cures for diseases, developing new energy and environmental technologies, addressing societal issues like homelessness and discrimination, making our nation “more fair and free,” and building new companies.

I thought Obama did a good job of inspiring his listeners, and they seemed to receive the youthful leader with enthusiasm. It was good stuff, but I felt uneasy.

In his closing remarks, President Obama reminded his young audience that their parents and teachers are working hard to support them. He added, “I’m working hard to fix up your classrooms and get you the books, equipment, and computers you need to learn.” Yes, that bothers me because such action does not fall within the constitutional guidelines for a president of the United States, and in this case, he did not present himself as a good role model.

Why is it that our president and federal representatives on both sides of the aisle seem to pay little attention to the constitutional limits of their offices? I think it’s a failure of the modern education system that was strongly influenced by early progressives like John Dewey (1859-1952). A prolific writer, Dewey had, and has, an outsized influence on education and education departments at colleges and universities where our nation’s teachers are trained to teach.

Dewey was preoccupied with social change. In his book, John Dewey and the Decline of American Education, Henry T. Edmondson notes that Dewey thought “to pursue change through politics can be frustratingly slow; using education to change the world is far more efficient. The ultimate result of such change is political and social transformation.”

In order to bring about change, Dewey advocated for jettisoning educational methods and curricula proven effective throughout the ages. He also found religion, objective truth, and documents like the Constitution to be too constraining. Rather than teaching timeless truths, values, and knowledge to children, Dewey thought that teachers and children should be free to pursue all kinds of educational experimentation to find truth for themselves—a never-ending pursuit of social change through the lens of a socialist worldview. Such an education program would seem to lead a nation toward a condition of civic illiteracy. And when a nation no longer understands its national values, well, the Constitution is nothing more than a restraint that stands in the way of social change.

This is the condition of the United States today. We Americans are woefully lacking in knowledge about the heritage of our country—most of us cannot pass a basic civic literacy test, and our politicians seem to find our Constitution much too restraining for their liking.

We need to ask ourselves, “What is the content of the education we are offering our children and how will they confront the greatest challenges of the future with the education we are giving them?” I am thankful that on Tuesday President Obama was truly inspiring in speaking about individual responsibility and was empathetic to those who have a tough life. I would be even more grateful if he would be as enthusiastic about education reform as he is about healthcare reform. Because education will decide the future of this country.

The Washington Post’s Eli Saslow did an excellent piece today on high schoolers who don’t remember 9/11 and are learning about it through textbooks. Many of the students were in second and third grade when it happened.

One student taking notes in a class about 9/11 wrote,

It was an example of ‘terrorism.’

The reporter follows student JaLeah Hedrick who does an interview with her grandfather (as someone who remembered 9/11) for extra credit.

For Hedrick, Sept. 11 was the pledge of allegiance that Vincennes area schools had begun playing over loudspeakers every morning since late 2001. It was the “Threat Level Orange” that she heard each time she visited the Indianapolis airport. It was the way her grandfather, a World War II veteran, grimaced when he spoke of “those Muslims.” It was the USA T-shirt her dad wore when he picked her up from school in an aging Pontiac with a red-white-and-blue license plate inscribed with the phrase “In God We Trust.”

And now, it was homework — due to Hutchison by 1 p.m. Friday.

The theory that promoting self-esteem in children provides wide-ranging benefits has been debunked. Again.

A new book, NurtureShock, by Po Bronson and Ashley Merryman, takes a look at a variety of recent findings about child development. Among them is evidence that teaching self-esteem doesn’t do children any good whatsoever.

Americans seem eager to embrace fads when it comes to child rearing, and the self-esteem fad was among the hottest. It became all the rage in schools, with California even establishing a self-esteem task force. In the elementary grades, my children recounted exercises they were asked to participate in during “Life Skills” class. My son, for instance, recalls his teacher asking each child in turn to tell the class one thing at which he excelled. For him, and undoubtedly for many other children, it didn’t ring true.

According to the book, the latest findings show that having high self-esteem doesn’t improve kids’ grades, enhance their social skills, or deter them from drinking alcohol.

To me it’s another argument that schools should stick to the basics and stay out of the business of group psychology. Imagine the money, time, and energy wasted on the futile effort to help children by teaching them to feel good about themselves.

I know that Christianity is more complicated than the simple but profound fact that God loves each of us perfectly. But I’ve often thought that if we could know that—deep down, every moment—it would be the cure for our insecurities and the negative thoughts and actions they breed. The knowledge of God’s love and the desire to love Him in return: Now there’s something worth fostering in children. And loving others—loving one’s neighbor as oneself—is surely a more worthy goal for all of us.

So did everyone survive this week? Obama’s school speech debate over now? OK, moving on . . . kind of.

One thing that really struck me in this week’s hubbub over the President’s speech to schoolchildren was how many parents were so volatile about their kids hearing it. It seemed many did not trust their schools (public or private) to adequately handle the speech and any potential discussion.

Here’s what I don’t understand: If you don’t trust an institution to do a good job of handling discussion in response to a 15-minute speech, what makes you trust them with the whole of your kids’ education the rest of the day/week/year? Especially if those teacher-led discussions are on the origin of the species or the great classics of literature?

My husband, Craig (yes, he of this previous WorldMagBlog post and this Terry Mattingly syndicated column), and I have always said we aren’t opposed to putting our homeschooled kids in public school. We believe that, with parental involvement, they could get a decent education at the ones in our area. But what will motivate me to put our kids in a Christian school if or when the time (and money) comes can be summed up in one word: trust—in the teachers, in the curriculum, and in the leadership.

If my kids are going to spend entire days with other adults in these formative years, I want them to be with teachers who have freedom to interact openly in spiritual discourse . . . with curriculum that doesn’t avoid hard questions and the accompanying hairy answers . . . with leaders who will challenge and mold my kids into leaders as well.

If trust isn’t firmly in place at the institution you’ve given authority and responsibility to teach your children, I’m genuinely curious: Why are your children there? Is it for financial reasons? Convenience reasons? Other reasons for a season? What is it?

A Kentucky mother is considering legal action after her teenage son was baptized while attending  a voluntary field trip to hear an evangelist speak at a local Baptist church. According to Michelle Ammons, she did not realize her son Robert Coffey would be visiting a church because he had only told her he was going with his football coach and some of his fellow teammates to hear a motivational speaker. Since the trip wasn’t a school-sponsored event, permission slips were not required; thus, it was up to the teens to inform their parents about what type of event they were attending.

School Superintendent Janet Meeks said Breckinridge County High School Coach Scott Mooney had permission to use a school bus for the after-school-hours trip. A volunteer drove the bus and monetary funds were donated to cover the cost of fuel. About 20 of the team’s 46 players elected to go on the trip, and nine of them answered a spontaneous call to be baptized.

Lisa Gross, spokeswoman for the Kentucky Department of Education, said that while state law prohibits teachers or school employees from preaching or imposing their own beliefs in the classroom, Mooney’s field trip “is a little different.”

The state’s law bans “adult-led religious activities,” she said, but only in a school setting. There are no such provisions for extracurricular activities. And the districts generally have a wide-berth when it comes to handling such trips.

“There’s no state law that says you have to have a policy related specifically to this,” she said.

But an ACLU lawyer is already crying foul, saying the trip seemed to violate the separation of church and state. What’s your take?

I just got back from watching President Obama’s speech at my daughter’s private classical Christian school. Several private Christian schools in our area, apparently, chose not to show it. Our school, I believe, made the right decision in letting the kids watch our president’s 16-minute address from Wakefield High School in Arlington, Va.

In an email over the weekend, our head of school said it was important for our kids to be a part of the “Great Conversation,” but he gave parents the option to have their kids not watch it (only about 10 in the middle and high school grades opted out). He also invited parents to come on over to the school and watch the speech with their kids. However, I was the only parent I saw who took advantage of that opportunity. (But, of course, I was looking for blog material!) The classroom of eighth graders I sat in with—many of which, I’m sure, have parents who did not vote for the president—were very attentive and respectful while listening to the Obama’s message. I wish I could have hung around longer to listen to the discussion on the speech in my daughter’s Civics class later this afternoon. (I’ll have to get a report from her later today.)

As for parents who chose not to let their kids watch the speech, which was meant to do nothing more than encourage our nation’s schoolkids to work hard, I agree with what former first lady Laura Bush told CNN yesterday: “That’s their right. That certainly is the right of parents to choose what they want their children to hear in school.”

But I also agree with how she followed that up: “I also think it’s really important for everyone to respect the president of the United States.” And I believe letting your kids watch this speech is one small way to show that respect, something Mrs. Bush’s husband didn’t see much of from many quarters during his time in office.

So what’s your reaction to the speech? What did your kids think? Were there any problems at your schools associated with the speech?

Well, I’m going to grab some lunch, but I need to make sure I take President Obama’s advice and thoroughly wash my hands first.