is a product of this backward teaching. Miss. Q is a freshman in college and was visiting home for Thanksgiving this past year. While reading an article in a woman's magazine regarding birth control she crossed a term she did not recognize. It turned out to be a term for a method of birth control, which she found out when she asked her mother, who was horrified to discover her 19-year-old daughter, had never been exposed to the word before. Miss. Q's mother assumed that her child was taught this either in biology or health class, so she had never bothered to discuss it with her. However, after this revelation, she sat down with her daughter and had a long in-depth talk about the topic.
             Stories like this one can be heard all over the country. Even in towns that offer easy access to birth control to students, this problem plagues the community. Take St. Paul Minnesota for example. With a prescription/voucher from a doctor, a student can go pick up protection from a local free clinic. However, 80% of the male students and 30% of the female students who receive such a prescription never go to pick them up. A recent survey in St. Paul discovered an alarming statistic that two out of every ten boys is or has been infected with chlamydia. In fact, teens 15-19 years old accounted for 41% of chlamydia cases and 32% of gonorrhea cases in Ramsey County Minnesota. Nothing can show us this problem better than a survey from 1995 of 15-24-year-old women asked about their use of contraceptives. It was shown that only 37.3% used birth control on a regular basis. In addition to this, only 4.4% regularly used protection against STDs. Another survey from 1990 of women of all ages in this country reported that while 70.7% used protection, only 7.9% used birth control that also protected against STDs.
             The major reason birth control is not taught in this school district is that nobody has thought of bringing up the question for many years. The last time...