II. Polylogue Discourse Modelling

Guided Discussion Techniques

Prepare for an analytical class discussion of Text B It’s 10:00 a.m.: Do You Know What Your Sitter’s Doing?

1. Appoint a person in charge of the discussion who will 1) compose a set of questions on the article in order to cover its contents and major problems and will 2) conduct the discussion in class, i.e. introduce the topic, guide the talks, stimulate the speakers and deliver a generalized conclusion.

2. Individual Work: Study closely Text B, the Focus and Additional Vocabulary. Optionally, in order to tackle the major issues in further detail, refer to additional sources.

3. Class Activities: Discuss the article in class; use it as a basis for a more expanded treatment of the major problems.

III. Monologue Discourse Modelling

Compose a rendering of the article It’s 4:00 p.m.: Do You Know Where Your Children Are? (Text C) and rehearse it for class presentation. For more precise instructions on rendering techniques, see Article Rendering Guidelines (Unit 2, Integrated Discourse Skills Development), p.80.

Unit 4. Hazards of Teenage Sex

Study and learn the topical focus vocabulary list. Provide Russian equivalents to the vocabulary items.

Focus Vocabulary List

1. nine in ten/nine out of ten Americans

2. to fall into opposing camps*

3. a debate over smth*/to debate smth, debatable

4. premarital chastity; chaste; pro-chastity programs

5. abstinence; to abstain; abstemious approach; abstinence-only curriculum

6. “secondary virginity”

7. puberty; (the average age of ~)

8. the reproductive system/function

9. birth control; to distribute/dispense birth control devices

10. teen pregnancy; teen birthrates; teen pregnancy prevention

11. birth to (births to unmarried girls)

12. sexual involvement (syn. sexual intercourse/act)

13. easy access to (~ abortion)

14. sexual abuse (syn. sexual assault/violence)

15. to molest; molestation; molester (syn. harass; harassment)

16. sex-for-points score keeping

17. to pressure smb for smth

18. a sexually transmitted disease (STD); to contract a disease

19. incidence (~ of STDs in teens)

20. to instill smth in smb (syn. to induce smth in smb)

21. to exceed; media excess; excessive

22. to glamourize smth in the media

23. to discard (~ the old-fashioned approach); syn. to dismiss smth

24. to thwart smb’s advances

Text A

Teenage Sex: Just Say “Wait”

Nine in 10 Americans agree: Schools should teach kids about sex. That, however, is the end of the consensus. Most adults fall into opposing camps on exactly which of the facts of life to teach. Some concede, with value-free resignation, that having sex is normative teen behavior and the most that adults can do is teach young people how sperm meets egg, toss out loads of condoms and hope for the best. Meanwhile, the “stop it” forces call for scaring teens into pre-marital chastity with horror stories of shame and disease.

Since 1981, the federal response to teen pregnancy has been to teach students to remain chaste until marriage. In 2006 Washington spent $176 million on restrictive abstinence-only curricula or, as some of these programs put it, “secondary virginity” for those who have already lost theirs.

The main criticism is that such programs are unrealistic and ineffective because they never discuss birth control and simply expect teens to avoid sex, sometimes using almost comically out-of-touch techniques. “Pet your dog, not your date” is the slogan of the popular Sex Respect program, conducted in 1,100 school districts nationwide. While it is important to stress abstinence, notes Jerry Bennett, acting director of Health and Human Services office that administers these programs, none of the “abstinence only” programs has a proven record of success. He favors the middle road supporting newer hybrid programs that “stress abstinence,” particularly for the youngest teens. But Bennett believes it is unrealistic to demand abstinence only. He wants to “give kids the tools” to resist peer and societal pressures to have sex and aims to induce a new sense of social values in the young and teach children as early as kindergarten age that they have the right to decide who touches their bodies. “We need to have our kids understand that sex is good but it has to be appropriate,” he says. Teens should be taught to make sound decisions about sex if they choose to have it, says Bennett – including informed choices about birth control. But, says Family Research Council Director Gary Bauer, that approach sends a mixed message, akin to saying “it’s illegal to shoplift, but if you do it, here are some tips on how to avoid getting caught.”

Still, decades of the abstinence-only approach have failed to end the long claim of the United States to the highest teenage pregnancy, abortion and childbirth rates in the West. They are twice as high as those of England, Wales and Canada and eight times as high as those of the Netherlands and Japan. Each year, more than 750,000 girls under the age of 20 become pregnant. Eight in ten of these pregnancies are unintended and 81 per cent are to unmarried teens. More than one-quarter end in abortion.

Who is to blame?

Social critics identify a welter of culprits, from media excesses and declining family values to – depending on which side is making the case – easy access to abortion (because it lets teens think sex can be risk-free) or the decline in abortion providers (because it leads to unwanted pregnancies). Even physiological reasons conspire: In the past 100 years, largely owing to improved nutrition, the average age of puberty for girls has dropped from 17 to 14.

America has been bombarded recently with harrowing scenes that confirm something is out of control when it comes to the way many teens think about sex. Most disturbing is the involvement of the youngest teens and even preteens. The molestation of a 10-year-old girl led to arrests of members of the Spur Posse, a group of middle-class boys in Lakewood, Calif., who proudly bragged of sex-for-points score keeping. In Yonkers, N.Y. police charged nine elementary-school pupils, ages 9 to 13, with sexually abusing a 12-year-old girl. School officials had casually dismissed the incident as a “let’s play rape” game. In most schools, sex education begins too late to instruct such young students – or even many older ones. One survey shows that among sexually active 15-year-olds, only 26 per cent of boys and 48 per cent of girls had had sex education by the time they first had intercourse.

Finding an Answer

That it is the youngest who most need the abstinence message was clear to two Cincinnati doctors. For Dr. Reginald Tsang, the moment of recognition came as he watched a 13-year-old mother and father – who could have walked out of any junior-high school in America – peer over the rim of an incubator at their baby, no bigger than Tsang’s hand, and confide they had no idea what to do next? Tsang began to think about how “our societal chaos has overwhelmed our technological advances.” After all, a computer-controlled neonatal unit like Tsang’s at Cincinnati’s Children’s Hospital Medical Center now almost routinely saves 9 of every 10 babies born weighing as little as 2 pounds. At the same hospital, Dr. Joseph Rauh, an adolescent-medicine specialist, was similarly frustrated. He provided birth control to teens, but, he noted, 13- and 14-year-old girls were coming back pregnant, “bewildered and confused.”

So Tsang (conservative and opposed to abortion) and Rauh (liberal and in favor of abortion rights) joined forces to find local funding for a new kind of sex-education program. The one they brought to Cincinnati grew out of a surprise discovery by Dr. Marion Howard while she was surveying teens who received birth control information at her Atlanta clinic. Her clients wanted birth control, she says, but “84 per cent wanted to know how to say no to someone pressuring them for sex – and to say no without hurting their feelings.”

As a result, Howard developed a curriculum called Postponing Sexual Involvement. Discarding the old-fashioned approach – a gym teacher with a pointer and a reproductive-system poster giving rote lectures on sexual plumbing – Howard opted for a peer system that relies on teens as teachers. In PSI, older teens – especially school leaders and athletes – are chosen as believable messengers for the spiel: “I can postpone sex and still be cool.” And teen leaders must also embrace abstinence themselves. “I’m happy because of my beliefs,” says Monique Chattah, a Cincinnati peer leader. “I have a better self-image.” The heart of PSI is role-playing. In a recent PSI class in Cincinnati, seventh graders played out a classic confrontation: Boy takes girl on an expensive date and then insists on sex. The girls practiced handling the pressure, and then the exercise was reversed, with the girl as the aggressor. This led to an open discussion of respect, values and even the way sex is glamorized in the media to sell products.

There are signs that PSI is filling an important need. National studies show that only 17 per cent of girls say they planned their first sexual intercourse – meaning most apparently have sex because they don’t know how to thwart advances, says Christopher Kraus, the coordinator of Cincinnati’s PSI program. A survey of Atlanta students found that those who had gone through PSI training were five times less likely than other teens to have started having sex by the end of eighth grade.

Sex education can play a major role in helping teens to make healthy and responsible decisions about sex, but the divisiveness surrounding teen-sex programs threatens their effectiveness. There is currently no federal program dedicated to supporting comprehensive sex education that teaches young people about both abstinence and contraception. Federal law establishes a stringent eight-point definition of “abstinence-only education” that requires programs to teach that sexual activity outside of marriage is wrong and harmful – for people of any age. Funded programs must exclusively promote abstinence meaning they cannot advocate contraceptive use or discuss contraceptive methods.

At the same time, sex-educators and public-health workers support more comprehensive forms of sex education that include information about both abstinence and contraception for the prevention of teenage pregnancy and STDs. They believe that such programs can help delay the onset of sexual activity among teens, reduce their number of sexual partners and increase contraceptive use when they become sexually active. Only a comprehensive approach can provide young people with the tools they need to protect themselves and become sexually healthy adults.

Answer the questions on the text.

1. What approaches to teen-sex education are there in the USA?

2. What has the federal response to the problem of teen pregnancy been since 1981?

3. What are the main drawbacks of abstinence-only curricula?

4. What do newer hybrid programs involve?

5. Has the federal policy of “abstinence only” been successful? What do the statistics on teen pregnancy reveal?

6. Who is to blame? What is the welter of culprits that social critics identify?

7. Why do the youngest teens and even preteens get involved in sex? What can this be accounted for?

8. What prompted two Cincinnati doctors (Dr. Tsang, Dr. Rauh) to join their forces and start a new kind of sex-education program?

9. Comment on the statement made by Dr. Reginald Tsang “Our societal chaos has overwhelmed our technological advances”. How can you spell it out?

10. What kind of curriculum did Dr. Marion Howard develop?

11. Has the PSI proved effective, so far?

12. What is meant by political divisiveness surrounding teen-sex programs?

13. What is your own approach to the problem of teenage sex?

Text B