[W]hen the long downward trend in teenage pregnancy and venereal disease suddenly reversed after the attitude-changing exercises known as “sex education” were introduced into American schools in the 1960s, it was the parents who were left to pick up the pieces when a teenage daughter became pregnant or an adolescent son caught some venereal disease. No teacher had to pay anything toward the financial costs or to lose a moment’s sleep over what had happened in these young people’s personal lives, and verbal virtuosity enabled the changed values which “sex education” promoted to not only escape censure but even to continue to foster the impression that what was called “sex education” was the solution, even when it turned out empirically to be an aggravation of the problem.
Like so much else, “sex education” fit the vision, which exempted it from the requirement of fitting the facts. Moreover, because these indoctrination exercises in promoting different values were called “education,” their legitimacy in the schools escaped serious scrutiny, as did their role in the results that followed.
Thomas Sowell, Intellectuals and Society, p.516
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