Straight Talk on Sex Among Teen-Agers

Sex was the topic in Peggy Johnson’s classroom Wednesday at the Amelia Earhart Continuation School in North Hollywood. Sex, babies and condoms.

Yet there wasn’t the usual giggling or cynicism among the two dozen teen-agers who sat in the room. Sex, they understood, is serious business, as they debated issues of responsibility and sexuality with two teen-agers who led the discussion while Johnson stood silently in the back of the room.

The two youths leading the class in what they call “values clarification” are peer educators from the Valley Community Clinic in North Hollywood. The clinic, one of only a handful of such teen-ager-to-teen-ager programs launched in 1991, trains young people to educate and counsel their peers about risky sexual behaviors and their consequences.

The results have been so promising that Dr. Felicia Stewart, U. S. deputy assistant secretary for population affairs, dropped in Wednesday morning to laud the youngsters who essentially run the program and to solicit ideas for dealing with the such issues on the national level.

“What I am discovering here is an entire untapped resource in dealing with what is considered a national crisis,” Stewart said. “Kids really can help kids. Adults are pathetic at things like this. . . .

“I wish everyone on Capitol Hill could sit in on a class like this,” she added.

Before the project began, 30% of the teen-agers visiting the clinic were pregnant. In the 3 1/2 years since the clinic opened up a suite dedicated to letting youths counsel their peers about sex--a place that plays MTV in the waiting room--the pregnancy rate dropped to 6% even though the number of visits by first-time patients more than tripled.

The peer counselors inform other teen-agers of different birth-control options, the proper use of condoms and ways to prevent the spread of sexually transmitted diseases.

“There is no way what they do here could be legislated through the federal government,” Stewart said. “Exactly what we see here--community efforts, individuals stepping forward to take care of their community--that’s the only real way to make a difference.”

Arlin Donis, 16, a peer counselor at the clinic and a mother of a toddler, said she feels strongly about teaching others what she believes could have helped her.

“A lot of teens think that it is easy to get government support if it happens to them,” said Arlin. “What no one understands is that it is really hard to have a baby in the ‘90s.”

Stewart scoffed at the idea--now before Congress--that teen-age pregnancy may be controlled by denying such families government aid. She said every problem has a scapegoat, and teen-age pregnancy has become a popular one for the country’s mounting welfare woes.

“These kids are merely a symptom,” she said, “not the cause or the solution. And I shudder to think that we would heap the responsibility for all of our welfare problems on the shoulders of a scared and confused 15-year-old.”