STARS CURRICULUM SUMMARY

 

The STARS Curriculum is the main component of a fear- and shame-based abstinence-only-until-marriage program designed to be implemented by high school student mentors and an adult coordinator with a middle school student audience. It is produced by Friends First in Littleton, Colorado.[i] SIECUS reviewed the 2008 edition written by Rob Harris, Gina Harris, and Ayinde Russell.

 

The program is intended to be used in an after-school setting as a supplement to a classroom-based abstinence-only program. The middle school participants are divided by gender into STARLites (for girls) and All STARS (for boys) groups, though the curriculum seems to be written with a number of coed activities that involve both groups coming together. The high school mentors are trained at a four-day national or regional conference run by Friends First and must sign a pledge to abstain from all sexual activity, drugs, and alcohol while involved in the program.

 

In general, the peer education model has the potential of being a promising way to engage young people; however, this program relies on fear, shame, and a rigid set of values and opinions that it imposes on all students. Very little effort is made to help young people clarify their own values or make decisions for themselves about relationships. Instead, the authors are intent on convincing students that abstinence until marriage is the only morally and socially acceptable relationship goal for young people.

 

 

 

 

It is important to remember that 46 percent of all high school students and six percent of all students under the age of 13 have had sexual intercourse.[ii] It is inappropriate and potentially harmful for an education program to imply that these teens have lost pieces of themselves, are not whole, or lack value. STARS attempts to counteract this stigmatization by urging mentors, “Make sure that each student in the group feels valuable. You cannot emphasize this enough.” This is laudable, but the focus on abstinence until marriage as the only “correct” goal only serves to reemphasize that sexually active students have done something bad and wrong.

 

“The Swapping Game” purports to “simulate the real possibilities of acquiring an STI,” but is likely to be wildly unrealistic and slanted toward dramatizing and inflating the consequences of sexual activity. The authors acknowledge that it is unlikely that the whole deck will be dealt during the activity because STARS mentor groups rarely draw 52 people. Even if there were enough people to deal out the entire deck, the kings would represent a 7.7% prevalence rate of HIV and a 7.7% prevalence rate of herpes. This is a grossly exaggerated HIV prevalence rate for any general population grouping of young people in the United States. In smaller groups of participants the eight kings and queens represent an even more exaggerated prevalence rate. For example, in a group of 20 students, the kings would represent a 20% prevalence rate of HIV and the queens a similar prevalence rate for herpes. This is nearly accurate for the prevalence rate of genital herpes in the adult U.S. population, but 50 times greater than the HIV prevalence rate for the entire country, let alone young people.

 

The curriculum uses statistics to suggest that pregnancy and parenting will disrupt young women’s lives, prevent them from graduating from high school, and reduce their lifelong earning potential. It seems likely that the curriculum misquotes some of these statistics as well, as the average income for college students is probably not very relevant in a comparison with the average income for high school dropouts. It’s likely that the authors meant to cite the average income for college graduates. Regardless, this is a rather simplistic message and current research actually shows that though “teen mothers are less likely to graduate from college compared to women who wait until the age of 30 to have children, if those same mothers had delayed childbearing until they were no longer teens, they likely would not have had starkly different socioeconomic circumstances overall. Specifically, they are not likely to earn significantly less money and are not more likely to use public benefits.”[v] Rather than teen pregnancy and motherhood causing dropouts and poverty, it seems much more likely that young people who grow up poor and don’t expect to have the opportunity to attend college are more susceptible to pregnancy.[vi]

 

STARS seems particularly preoccupied with convincing middle school students that they will have amazing sex once they are married, which if the average age of marriage is any guide, will be 13 to 17 years after they complete this program. Unfortunately, there is no guarantee or proof that marriage (or abstinence until marriage) will bring about great sex. Similarly, marriage has not been proven to generate income. The curriculum attempts to quote from an article in the Institute for Youth Development’s (IYD’s) journal Adolescent and Family Health to prove this statement about increased incomes. Though the quote abruptly ends midsentence, it seems the assertion is that young people who remain virgins until 18 have annual incomes nearly 20 percent higher than their non-virgin counterparts. What the authors fail to mention is that $2,200 of the $2,700 of income advantage the article found in male virgins “could be attributed to other factors.”[vii] It should also be noted that IYD is an organization that advocates for abstinence-only-until-marriage programs and has received millions of dollars in federal funding to support these programs. The curriculum also cites Maggie Gallagher’s The Case for Marriage: Why Married People are Happier, Healthier, and Better Off Financially. Gallagher was the founding president of the National Organization for Marriage and one of the leading national opponents of same-sex marriage.

 

 

 

The authors seem to assume that all students in the class, and all people in the world for that matter, are heterosexual and that their gender identity matches with their sex. By repeatedly asserting that the only safe and morally acceptable sex is in the context of marriage and only using straight and gender conforming young people as examples, the curriculum is essentially telling LGBT young people that they can never have a safe or healthy sexual relationship. Lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender youth, especially young men who have sex with men and young transgender women, are at increased risk for STDs, including HIV. It is clear that these young people need programs that can help them handle the complexities of growing up lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, or questioning their sexual orientation or gender identity. Therefore, educators should always assume that there are LGBT students in every class and understand that programs written exclusively for heterosexual and non-transgender students are not appropriate. Such curricula will only further marginalize and alienate these students and may put them at increased risk.

 

STARS is not designed to help young people examine their own values and the values of their parents, families, and communities or think for themselves. Instead, the curriculum is firmly rooted in the opinion that sexual behavior outside of marriage is morally wrong, that everyone should save sex for marriage, and that the only way to have a happy marriage is to remain a virgin until one’s wedding day. STARS presents this position as if it were an undisputed fact or a universal truth but clearly it is not; 95 percent of Americans ages 15–44 report having premarital sex by the age of 44, and 63 percent of high school seniors and 80 percent of college students 18–24 have engaged in sexual intercourse, yet the median age of first marriage is 27.5 for men and 25.6 for women.[ix] The program would better serve young people by acknowledging that there are differences in opinions and values regarding marriage and premarital sex and helping young people determine their own values. Instead, students are provided with leading questions and “good” or “right” answers.

 

 

Like many abstinence-only-until-marriage programs, STARS is focused on convincing young people that there is only one correct way to live in regard to sexual activity and that it is abstinence until heterosexual marriage. STARS goes a step further, though, by defining what activities its authors see as consistent with abstinence and what activities should be avoided. It’s interesting that the curriculum marks French kissing as the boundary, but defines sexual activity so vaguely—as anything that involves “sexual stimulation”—that French kissing or even holding hands could potentially fall under it. In addition to proscribing behavior for the middle school participants and the high school mentors, who have signed the virginity pledge,the program also tells students to avoid any media that talks about sex. Besides the unrealistic nature of these prohibitions, it is unfortunate that STARS misses an opportunity to allow students to discuss and clarify their own values, as well as an opportunity to train them to be resilient and critical media consumers.

 

 

“If anybody in your group has experienced sexual abuse, emphasize their need to talk to somebody about it. If they feel bad because they are no longer considered a ‘virgin,’ please let them know that this was not their choice and they should not view themselves as sexually active. Renewed abstinence is not a bad thing at all and many students have chosen this route after they have been given the information. Make sure your students have a clear understanding of renewed abstinence and know that victims of sexual abuse are not at fault” (STARS, p. 47).

 

STARS should be congratulated for including a section on sexual abuse, as many abstinence-only-until-marriage programs make no distinction between forced and chosen sexual activity. However, this lesson is somewhat confusing in that it appears to be optional. It seems as if the advice above is only to be given if a student discloses sexual abuse. It seems unlikely that a young person would disclose such a stigmatized experience in a group setting and without that disclosure the entire group might be left without this important message.

The paragraph is also confusing in that it assures survivors of sexual abuse that they are not at fault, but falls short of telling them they can still identify as virgins. Instead, it implies that they should strive for “renewed abstinence” even though according to STARS’ own definition, a sexual abuse survivor wouldn’t have broken a vow of abstinence because the sexual activity was not chosen. This is a dangerous blurring of definitions that could result in continued stigmatization of survivors of sexual abuse.

 

Effective sexuality education programs provide accurate information in an unbiased manner and encourage students to think critically for themselves in order to define their own values and beliefs regarding sexuality. To do so, curricula must recognize and respect a diversity of opinions, orientations, family structures, and values. Unfortunately, STARS fails to incorporate these critical components and instead promotes a biased perspective and presents opinions as universal truths. Ultimately, STARS falls far short of meeting the needs of young people so that they may develop the skills and knowledge necessary to become sexually healthy adults.

 

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