Sex (Un)Education
An insight report about the sex education methods in the United States of America

The teen pregnancy is an issue considering the problems that causes to the health of the young mother and the child, and adding the dropout rate and economic problems it causes is a problem recognized all over the world. The teen pregnancy rate is high on developing countries, with a big exception: the U.S.A. have the highest rate in the developed countries, and this was shown also by our research on Google. That is the reason why our research focused there very soon.

That led us to Abstinence Only, the controversial education system adopted in many states and still in the centre of the debate for the methods and funding.

The followed path is meant for understanding the problematic aspects while looking at the big picture: this allows to place the problem in its context and to discover how it works. Starting from our research question, "How does the debate on Abstinence Only develop?" we decided the tools to use or how to proceed when we couldn't find tools for our needs.

Starting from an analysis of the topic and the actors who debate on it, we focused on how this theme is discussed, with the semantic and social analysis. The last step allowed us to place this controversy in its cultural and political context, completing the overview.

This allowed us to discover how the main problem seems to revolve around the topic of birth control, or better yet, the lack of mention of any mean of birth control during the lessons of Abstinence Only, where they teach only about being abstinent. This, and the programs, are not always clear about their methods and the information given. Around these main topics many others surface, creating a prismatic controversy that touches cultural, political and economic issues.

For further information you can also check the page of our work at Density Design

Politecnico di Milano
Master Degree in Communication Design
Course: Final Synthesis Design Studio
Fall/Winter 2013
Professor: Paolo Ciuccarelli
 Teaching Assistants: Matteo Azzi, Daniele Ciminieri, Michele Mauri, Azzurra Pini, Donato Ricci, Giorgio Uboldi
 
Project Team:
Sara Pizzetti, Andrea Pracchi, Chiara Scalvi and Alessandro Tosi