No one was surprised last week when news broke that a small-town school without a sex education program was teeming with chlamydia. Unfortunately, that story has proven to be false, leaving a tiny Texas town traumatized with embarrassment over an error reported as fact by the school’s superintendent.
Vice reports that after Jim Rumage sent home a notice stating that 20 students had contracted chlamydia (that’s about one in 15 for the school), national news media descended upon Crane, Texas to report what was going on. The Centers for Disease Control referred to such an epidemic as “reaching epic proportions,” and all across the country people (like us) shook their heads at what a lack of education could do. But Rumage, who told Vice he thought he was “acting prudently” made one fatal error: He wrote to parents that 20 students had contracted the disease when actually 21 students had been tested for it. The actual number of students affected, three, hardly qualifies as an outbreak.
While it’s upsetting that the small town has been showered with negative attention—Rumage says that teens started acting particularly mean to each other, accusing one another of starting the outbreak even though they didn’t know who was infected—the false outbreak is also bringing the topic of Texas’ sex education requirements to the national spotlight. Now, more attention is being paid to whether the classes (which are not required by law) should be integrated and whether abstinence-only education—the type required if sex ed is taught in Texas schools—is good enough.
-
-
-
-
-
-
-
-
-
-
-
-
-
-
-
-
-
-
-
-
-
-
-
-
-
-
-
-
-
-
-
-
-
-
-
-
-
-
-
-
