Last in a series

They're going to find out.

Telegram photo / Joel Hodges (ENLARGE)

Trudie Wilburn, left, and Stephine Alford, center, talk with Michele Wallen, a trainer for N.C. School Health Training Center, during a break in the Growth and Development Workshop taught last week at N.C. Wesleyan College.

At some point in their lives, daddy's little princess and mommy's baby boy are going to discover sex. It is a matter of how and when and is often beyond parents' control, said Ashlin Gravely, creator and director of Worth Waiting 4!, an independent program she teaches in conjunction with the abstinence education curriculum in the Nash-Rocky Mount Schools.

"Turn on the TV: 70 percent of all the TV that (children) see has some kind of sexual content in it, and I can tell you that it is not sexual content that shows any kind of consequence," Gravely said.

So, where are children going to find out about those consequences, chief among them pregnancy and sexually transmitted diseases? Many people rely on the schools to carry that burden, Gravely said.

Since 1996, North Carolina has followed an abstinence-until-marriage curriculum in its health classes, said Michele Wallen, health education and promotion instructor at East Carolina University.

The curriculum teaches students that abstinence is the only guaranteed way to avoid the risks surrounding sex, Wallen said. It also tells students about contraceptives and giving factual information about their effectiveness in preventing pregnancy and STDs.

"I think there is a misconception that we are an abstinence-only state, and we are actually an abstinence-until-marriage state. We are an abstinence-based state, ... because our state statute says that we will teach contraceptive effectiveness and failure rates beginning in the seventh grade," Wallen said.

- - -

Nash-Rocky Mount and Edgecombe County public schools adhere to the abstinence-until-marriage policy, officials said.

The curriculum is age-appropriate, with different aspects of development and relationship building assigned to each grade, said Mary Williams, director of student support services for Edgecombe County Public Schools.

"With parent permission, students can receive additional information. Whatever questions they might have or what information they need, if it is beyond the abstinence-until-marriage legislation, then if parents sign permission for either the nurse or counselor to talk to with the student, then we can do that," Williams said.

The state law does not apply to how nurses, counselors or teachers in elective courses can answer questions about sex education, Wallen said, but local school systems might apply extra guidelines to them.

A good deal of fear and misconception exists among educators about teaching the curriculum, said Angie Miller, healthful living coordinator for Nash-Rocky Mount Schools. She has talked with teachers who censor themselves because they are not sure what they are allowed to say.

"Teachers are scared to address this because of the restrictions that are put on the teachers as to what they can and cannot cover. Keep in mind that if they are covering something in the curriculum that has not been approved, it can be crucial to their career," Miller said.

The state is trying to rectify that with training sessions on abstinence and puberty education, such as the one Wallen helped teach Wednesday at N.C. Wesleyan College.

The best way to combat those misunderstandings is with the truth, Gravely said, and that is what the students need to hear, too. It is what she tries to do when she teaches the Worth Waiting 4! program, which adheres to state guidelines but uses activities other than lectures to answer questions to get its message across.

"I think it is important for kids to understand that their choices matter and that when you make a choice, you have to make it with all the information," Gravely said. "When you go into a classroom and you are looking at 14- and 15-year-old kids and they want to know what to do and you are giving them the options, it is more than just standing up there and saying 'Sex can hurt you. Don't have sex.' ... It is all about you and the choices that you are making."

Gravely came to the health class Alex Smith, 15, took at Southern Nash High School this year. Smith said the instructor did a great job of explaining things rather than just teaching from a textbook.

Smith, who said she will stay abstinent, thought the class was effective, but she said there are some teens who will have sex regardless of the warnings.

"Some of my classmates, they just didn't listen, I guess. I've seen about three or four pregnant freshman this year, so that's all the side effects I need," said Smith, a freshman.

- - -

These teens and thousands of others statewide raise the issue of how effective the abstinence-until-marriage curriculum is, said N.C. Rep. Susan Fisher, D-Buncombe. She wants the curriculum to include more information because it is not keeping teens from becoming sexually active.

"If they are going to do that, we want them to be safe. The way I look at it is that it is the same kind of protection that you would want to give your infant or toddler child that you are getting inoculated for different diseases," Fisher said.

Others think it is working and should be left alone, including John Rustin, vice president of N.C. Family Policy Council, a nonprofit research and education organization in Raleigh. He said he opposes changes to the law that would allow contraceptives to be brought into classrooms and demonstrated.

The change would portray contraceptives more positively, which could be dangerous for teens, Rustin said.

"I think it is important for them to understand the real risks that they face. ... It is what they can realistically expect the success and failure rates to be with condoms and contraceptives versus the clinical failure rates, which assume that the contraceptives are used 100 percent effectively 100 percent of the time," Rustin said.

When Gravely taught her program at Rocky Mount High School last year, Sarah Bergland, 16, thought it was effective. But she worries the expectations people have for abstinence lessons are too high considering the instruction lasts a few days in freshman year and is supposed to stay with students for life.

"People need to realize that one program isn't going to change everything," said Bergland, a sophomore.