Family Forum / Parenting / Adoption / June 2007

On Jun 25, 10:26?pm, "Marley Greiner" <maddogmar...@worldnet.att.net>
wrote:

6 down, 44 to go.

The bad news is that Maine continues to have a Safe Haven law,
effectively denying the same information to some in the hope that it
anonymity might some day save a life.

This opinion piece, although written on another subject, has something
important to say about Safe Havens, to those willing to go beyond
slogans.

J.

Abstinence and the perception in decision-making

David Brooks

June 23, 2007

A little while ago, a national study authorised by the US Congress
found that abstinence education programs don't work. That gave
liberals a chance to feel superior because it turns out that preaching
traditional morality to students doesn't change behaviour.

But in this realm, nobody has the right to feel smug. Schools are
awash in moral instruction - on sex, multiculturalism, environmental
awareness, and so on - and basically none of it works. Sex education
doesn't change behaviour. Birth control education doesn't produce
measurable results. The fact is, schools are ineffectual when it comes
to values education.

You can put an adult in front of a classroom or an assembly and that
adult can emit words, but don't expect much impact.

That's because all this is based on a false model of human nature.
It's based on the idea that human beings are primarily deciders. If
you pour them full of moral maxims, they will be more likely to decide
properly when temptation arises. If you pour them full of information
about the consequences of risky behaviour, they will decide to
exercise prudence and forswear unwise decisions.

That's the way we'd like to think we are, but that's not the way we
really are, and it's certainly not the way teenagers are.

There is no central executive zone in the brain where all information
is gathered and decisions are made. There is no little homunculus up
there watching reality on a screen and then deciding how to proceed.
In fact, the mind is a series of parallel processes and loops, bidding
for urgency.

We're not primarily deciders. We're perceivers. The body receives huge
amounts of information from the world, and what we do is turn that
data into a series of generalisations, stereotypes and theories that
we can use to navigate our way through life. Once we've perceived a
situation and construed it so that it fits one of the patterns we
carry in our memory, we've pretty much rigged how we're going to
react, even though we haven't consciously sat down to make a decision.

Construing is deciding.

A boy who grew up in a home where he was emotionally rejected is going
to perceive his girlfriend differently than one who grew up in a
happier home, even though he might not be able to tell you why or how.
Women who grow up in fatherless homes menstruate at an earlier age
than those who don't, and surely perceive their love affairs
differently as well.

When two teenagers are in the back of a car about to have sex or not,
or unprotected sex or not, they are not autonomous creatures making
decisions based on classroom maxims or health risk reports. Their
behaviour is shaped by the subconscious landscapes of reality that
have been implanted since birth.

Did they grow up in homes where they felt emotionally secure? Do they
often feel socially excluded? Did they grow up in a neighbourhood
where promiscuity is considered repulsive? Did they grow up in a sex-
drenched environment or an environment in which children are buffered
from it? (A New Zealand study found that firstborns are twice as
likely to be virgins at 21 than later-born children.)

In other words, the teenagers in that car won't really be alone.
They'll be in there with a whole web of attitudes from friends, family
and the world at large. Some teenagers will derive from those shared
patterns a sense of subconscious no-go zones. They'll regard
activities in that no-go zone the way vegetarians regard meat - as a
taboo, beyond immediate possibility.

Deciding is conscious and individual, but perceiving is subconscious
and communal.

Teen sex programs that work don't focus on the sex. They focus on the
environment teens live in. They work on the substratum of perceptions
students use to orient themselves in the world. They don't try to lay
down universal rules, but apply the particular codes that have power
in distinct communities. They understand that changing behaviour
changes attitudes, not the other way around.

They understand that whether it's in high school or the Middle East,
getting human nature right is really important. We're perceivers
first, not deciders.

David Brooks is a New York Times columnist and author of Bobos in
Paradise: the New Upper Class and How They Got There.

http://www.smh.com.au/news/opinion/abstinence-and-the-perception-in-decisionmaki
ng/2007/06/22/1182019369233.html?page=fullpage#contentSwap1