Contact Name
Barbara Dietsch
562-985-9488

Contact Email
bdietsc@WestEd.org

Steve Van Bockern, Ed.D., Professor of Education
Laurie Wenger, Assistant Professor
Augustana College, Sioux Falls, South Dakota

In a Midwestern church-related college classroom, 19 to 24-year old future elementary teachers thought about how elementary students could best be protected from the multitudes of risks inherent in early sexual experience. The conversation turned to their own experiences in sex education. Support of their sex education was limited. One student, for example, explained how her sex education culminated in carrying a hard-boiled egg around for a week-until it was eaten by her dog. She remembered that many of the eggs sat in lockers during track practice. At the end of the week, the boys decided to throw the eggs against the walls. Other students remembered embarrassed health or physical education teachers drawing diagrams on the chalk board, low budget, poorly made films on sexual development and childbirth, a coloring book for "red flag and green flag touches" and giggles that accompanied a teacher struggling to put a condom on a banana. Most of the students heard the "talk" as separated boy, girl fifth graders.

The informal discussion led to anonymous reporting that almost half of the students were virgins, about a fourth practiced various degrees of safe sex, and a small number were "born again virgins"-the label used by a student to indicate the decision to end intercourse until marriage. The college students' responses seemed to confirm the recent studies that fewer young people are having sex and those who are use birth control more often. One student pointed out that the discussion didn't even address the issue of "Clinton sex" and the accompanying psychological and physical risks of early oral sex.

The discussion, like the more scientific studies, ultimately resulted in an acknowledgment that sex education isn't the only answer in protecting students from the risks of early sexual activity. If education alone isn't the answer, what is? As expected, there is no one simple answer in determining how young people can be protected from early sexual experience, or for that matter, from any high-risk behaviors such as smoking, alcohol consumption, or violence. In addition to specific interventions, in a larger context, the answer is to create a culture that meets the needs of our youth. When families and communities give young people what they need, children thrive and are less likely to be involved in risky behavior. In turn, their families and communities prosper. This idea raises the question, "What do children need?"

The authors of Reclaiming Youth at Risk: Our Hope for the Future, offer a cross-cultural perspective that suggests all children need a sense of belonging, mastery, independence and generosity. These core values have been called the Circle of Courage. These core values or needs were often found in simpler tribal cultures that actually had sophisticated systems for rearing responsible, respectful children. These needs were also described in the writings of youth pioneers, and they have now been validated by modern research as critical foundations of positive youth development.

Belonging or attachment to care-givers is the foundation of all human relationship and learning. Children and youth who are weakly bonded to positive adults in family, school, and community are launched on a trajectory of conflict and risky behavior. The motivation to become competent and creatively solve problems is innate in children and can be nurtured by rich learning experiences. But children who fail and are alienated from school are deprived of skills and positive supports necessary to cope with life challenges. Developing mastery or achievement is essential to self worth and personal efficacy. Independence or autonomy is the end result of securely attached and competent children. But youth who are deprived of adult nurturance and mentoring display patterns of learned helplessness, or they become oppositional and rebel against all authority. These youth need opportunities to take charge of their lives and develop responsibility. Only as children experience caring relationships, gain competence, and realize independence are they able to activate their potential to care for others.

Because these needs are so essential, youth from abusive environments often pursue attachment, achievement, autonomy and altruistic needs in distorted ways that hurt themselves and others. Early sexual behavior can be seen as a distorted means of meeting basic needs.

Pulitzer prize winner Leon Dash, in his book When Children Want Children, discovered after living for a year in Washington Heights that his assumptions that teenage pregnancy among poor, black urban youths grew out of ignorance and girls falling victim to manipulative boys were wrong. Many of the children he talked to had had extensive sex education. He found that girls, far from being the passive victims, were often equal-or greater-actors in early sexual experience. Dash concluded that young people sometimes choose to have babies so they can love and be loved-satisfying needs of belonging and generosity. Pregnancy was a statement of achievement-they might fail in school but they were fertile or virile enough to have or to create a baby. Dash noted that some found that sexual activity was a statement of independence-nobody, especially parents who attempted to control, could tell them how to use their bodies.

Carol Bly coined the term "cultural abuse" to name those things in a culture that block growth and development. Cultural abuse comes from anything that keeps youth from having their needs met. Isolated neighborhoods, unsafe places for children to learn and play, limited educational opportunities, poverty, preoccupation with material possessions, power through domination of others and adult perceptions that youth are unimportant to the community all work against belonging, mastery, independence and generosity.

Meeting the developmental needs of youth can become a guide to repair the crumbling infrastructure that works against young people's ability to thrive. The Search Institute in Minneapolis, Minnesota produced a framework of developmental assets needed by all children in order for youth to be protected from high-risk behavior in a difficult and complex society (see Asset-Building and Risk Reduction in this issue). The work of the Institute clearly demonstrates that as assets or the developmental needs of youth are met, health-compromising behavior decreases.

How is an abusive culture changed to a protective culture rich in providing the developmental needs of children? A place to begin is with youth-serving systems such as schools, religious institutions, and youth organizations. Programs, policies and practices need to be reshaped to focus on meeting the needs of youth. For example, schools that suspend students without providing social skills for reintegration deprive children of belonging and mastery. Youth organizations that do for children what they can do for themselves build little independence. Religious institutions that ignore the voice of children and inhibit their desire to serve, limit generosity. Political leaders and those in positions of power must assume responsibility to counter toxic cultures with protective cultures. Drug and sex education programs are part of the solution. But only when pervasive and inclusive steps are taken to meet the needs of children will better lives for all be created.