Abstinence classes -- failure or too early to tell?

It's not working and the abstinence critics will be happy to tell you all about it. In a new congressional report, students who took abstinence lasses were just as likely to engage in sex as those students who hadn't taken the course. And those who attended 25 percent of the classes had the same number of sex partners as those who did not attend.

I would hope even the critics of these classes would agree that this is depressing news. Not just the futility of the classes themselves but the stubbornness of today's teens. I went to high school during the days of raunchy teen comedies like Porky's and various slasher flicks when some girls throat was cut when she lost her virginity in a car, but being a teen today has to be head-spinning. Girls Gone Wild, lowcut jeans, rap videos, Internet smut, and celebrities who are more famous for falling out of their dresses than for the possession of any real talent all have a collateral effect. Trust me, I don't want to turn the calendar back to 1952 but my days in 1983 seem almost wholesome.

My daughter is eight and she has a classmates who have boyfriends. What that means in today's third grade, I have no clue but it doesn't bode well for the fifth grade.