Abstinence lessons: abstinence-only sex education materials are available for free to schools. But how do you tell teenage parents to wait until marriage?

Three phrases stand out in large, white letters on the long blackboard: "To abstain," "sexual activity" and "subliminal seduction." Close to 50 freshmen shift in their desks--some watching their petite teacher in front of the blackboard, and others talking to their peers in the crowded, windowless classroom at Kenwood Academy.

Elaine R. Jones blows on a whistle around her neck to gain the students' attention and launches into her lesson plan on subliminal seduction: how teens are bombarded with images of sex every day, and how they can resist those seductions and abstain from sexual activity. Not just now, or in the near future, she says, but until marriage.

"What is a sex act?" Jones asks the class, pointing to the "sexual activity" portion of the blackboard. One student, who has been tossing out jokes throughout the class, raises his hand from the corner. "Say, if I was a virgin," he pauses, then laughs slyly, gesturing with his shoulders so that his classmates know this is a hypothetical question. "If I had oral sex, I'm not a virgin?"

The students look expectantly at Jones. The guidelines of the abstinence-only curriculum certainly do not consider oral sex acceptable behavior for unmarried persons, but it is an act Jones says the curious young adults are "obsessed with."

"Technically," Jones says, if a girl engaged in oral sex, "she is still a virgin. But, in her sexual abstinence, she is not a virgin anymore."

The concept is nothing new to the students, as abstinence is the topic every day in this five-week sex education course. Among other sources, Jones teaches from an abstinence-only lesson plan called Project Reality, created by an independent organization of the same name and used in 522 middle and high schools in Illinois teaching sex education this past school year. Based out of northwest suburban Glenview, the organization is one of 29 in the state that accepts government money to create abstinence-only sex education materials and curriculum plans that are then distributed to schools free of charge--something that might make the lesson plans more attractive to schools with few resources.

It is, after all, a free, prepackaged lesson plan, said Steve Trombley, president and chief executive officer of Planned Parenthood/Chicago area. "We know anecdotally that affluent school districts that can afford to purchase extensive curriculum will make those purchases, but school districts that are cash-starved, like so many school districts in the state, are all too ready to take it for free."

Federally funded abstinence-only curricula is held to a strict eight-point definition, which teaches that sexual activity is only acceptable within a monogamous marriage--a concept that often brushes aside information such as how to obtain and use birth control and to prevent sexually transmitted diseases.

In the classroom, however, this strict outline is not always practical. Teens bring questions and experiences that fall outside of these rigid parameters. While students recognize the wisdom behind abstinence-focused teachings, they are also the first to point out the irony of such instruction in schools filled with pregnant students and teen parents.

"Every time you look up, someone's pregnant," said Kiyona Jackson, a soft-spoken senior at Hyde Park Academy, 6220 S. Stony Island Ave. in Woodlawn. "I don't think they get pregnant on purpose. They listen to [sex education], but they go against it or whatever."

Even though she knows not all students will listen to the sex-can-wait message, Kendra Thomas, another Hyde Park student, said she believes that it's an important viewpoint for students to receive. "They tell you that [sex] can cause you to do things you don't want to do, and emotional stress," she said.

According to Denise Everhart, one of Hyde Park Academy's physical education teachers, the school supplements its health education program with lesson plans from ABJ Community Services Inc., an agency that trains instructors to teach abstinence-only materials, and Project VIDA, a group founded in 1992 to address the rising number of HIV and AIDS cases in Chicago's black and Latino communities.

Everhart supports this combination. "They're getting the facts now," she said. "Oftentimes ... they misunderstand the whole reproductive process. For example, some think that they can't get pregnant standing up. They don't understand conception, and that's something they definitely understand by the end [of the course]."

Najamusahar Muneeruddin, a sophomore this fall at Lane Tech Preparatory High School, 2501 W. Addison St., said some students might rebel against the Project Reality curriculum taught there. "Some kids that take the sex ed class get angry, 'Why are they telling me what to do?'" he said.

Classmate Rex Libunao agreed. "If we are going to have sex, we might as well have choices," he said. "At least you'd know about condoms, but they never told us about that."

Abstinence-only supporters believe Project Reality and other such lessons arm students with information they need to refuse sexual activity until marriage. But detractors claim that message is realistic only to a handful of students in today's classrooms and does little to provide those who choose not to abstain with the facts they need to protect themselves from pregnancy and sexually transmitted diseases.

The debate has gained momentum over the years. President George W. Bush increased the abstinence-only grant budget to $170 million for fiscal year 2005, more than double what was spent in 2001. Most recently in Illinois, lawmakers have proposed a measure to guarantee state funding for "abstinence-based" sex education, which would promote abstinence as the best way to prevent sexually transmitted diseases and pregnancies but would also provide age-appropriate information about condoms and birth control.

Caught in between are students left with valid questions and no answers to be found in their workbooks, like "The Navigator," a text that supplements the Project Reality curriculum. "What if a girl was reading that, and was pregnant?" questions Lane Tech student Halla Karaman. "What if she wanted an abortion? Where would she go? How much would it cost? Do you need parental permission?"

"That's the problem," continues classmate Quetzalli Castro. "They tell you how you get pregnant, but not what to do. They tell you about abstinence, but they stop there."

For her students, Jones has helped supply some of the answers. It was Rahkeisha Teagues' favorite part of the class. "She gave us little cards to write questions down on. It's fun," Teagues said.

In aging metal file cabinets near the door of her classroom, Jones keeps several stacks of note cards bound with rubber bands. On each note card is a single health-related question written on the first day of class by a student; Jones proceeds through them as the semester progresses, answering each and every one of the students' anonymous questions in class. "I'm an advocate of abstinence, but I'm also realistic," Jones said. "I try to teach to the whole class."

Usually the cards cover a range of topics, but this past year the cards shared an obvious theme, Jones said. "Every question was on sex, and they're very detailed."

Elaine Jones supplements abstinence-only lesson plans at Kenwood Academy by addressing her students' "detailed" questions about sex. Photo by Mary Hanlon.