WAY TO GO, ATHENS, GEORGIA!!! ...."You can no longer tell them in 2007 what you told them in 1950"

Clarke schools won't teach just abstinence under sex-ed policy Online Athens - Athens,GA,USA
Sixteen-year-old Johnathan Pitts might not be a father today if he had known more about birth control before he became sexually active, he told the Clarke Board of Education Thursday.

But because Clarke County schools don't teach students who are having sex how to prevent pregnancy, the Clarke Central student said he didn't know all that he should. That will change next year following a 7-1 vote by the school board. Board members nixed the district's long-standing policy of abstinence-only sex education, in favor of a new policy that includes information about birth control, pregnancy and disease prevention. The change is overdue, Pitts said. "Tell them more than they need to know about sex before they even start," he told the board. [memo to Mr. Pitts: they 'start' young in Georgia]. The vote overturns years of abstinence-only education in Clarke County where the current policy - first adopted in the early 1990s - requries teaching abstinence as the only sure method of preventing pregnancy, sexually transmitted disease and HIV/AIDS. The current policy also bars teachers from using any instructional materials that emphasize any sexual practice other than abstinence until marriage.