Teenagers and the Importance of Abstinence
Teenagers need to be taught to practice abstinence. By learning this important lesson, youths will be less likely to contract sexually transmitted diseases, and they will be safe from unwanted pregnancies that could lead to abortions.
Three million people under the age of 20 in the United States become infected with a sexually transmitted disease each year. With 66 percent of high school students having had intercourse by graduation, these numbers are not surprising (Planned Parenthood-Helping Young).
The effects of sexually transmitted diseases can be devastating. Once a person contracts herpes, he must deal with it for the rest of his life. The HIV virus puts a person on the fast track to death. Growing up is hard enough for a child without having to face his own mortality.
I learned all I wanted to know about sexually transmitted diseases while attending religious school at my synagogue. I was 13 at the time, but I still remember the experience vividly eight years later. One Wednesday night, the rabbis called all of the eighth, ninth, tenth, and eleventh graders into the chapel for a special program. One of the teachers had prepared a slide show to demonstrate the effects that a sexually transmitted disease had on the human body. The first several pictures were not too bad, showing not much more than some bumps around a girl's mouth. As the show progressed, the slides got more gruesome. A man's genitals with large sores displayed the effects of herpes. Another slide showed the bottom of a girl's foot that had a hole the size of a quarter in it, the STD eating away at it like termites do an old house. I never have forgotten that night, and I wish that every child ...
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The primary argument which most advocates for abstinence only education have is that sex before marriage is immoral, not appropriate and that abstinence is the only completely effective method of preventing teen pregnancy and STI contraction. These advocates also emphasize that condoms are not a sure-fire way of preventing pregnancy and STI contraction. Many of the proponents for abstinence-only education believe that educating youth with information concerning sex and contraception will embolden them to become to begin or increase sexual activity. Such advocates accredit the lowering of teenage pregnancy to abstinence only education (Collins, Alagira, and Summers 12-13).
Many people may ask what is opera? Opera is a form of work that is very dramatic. It is sung by singers called opera singers who are known for their very beautiful voices. Opera began in the Baroque period, it originated in Italy and it quickly became popular spreading all over Europe. With this style, the singer has to have a certain type of voice, they have to be able to project their voices differently than normal singer. The opera singers were usually accompanied by orchestras and different instruments. In this paper I am going to tell you about Leontyne Price, Kathleen Battle, and Linda Maguire who are opera singers.
MONDELLI, PETER. "The Sociability Of History In French Grand Opera: A Historical Materialist Perspective." 19Th Century Music 37.1 (2013): 37-55. Academic Search Premier. Web. 6 May 2014.
This article contributed to my project by giving an example of the impact of Opera on the public, and the importance it had in Italy. The article was able to specify certain events that Opera was apart of, whether it was the cause or the victim of a punishment from the invaders. Not only that, but the article also explains the improvement of Opera after the French Revolution. This source is reliable, because it was an official journal that was written long ago and was digitized for the public.
Early composers wrote for the theatre. Accompanied solo song, which we now call ‘art song’, was unable to compete with the splendor of opera, and so held little interest as a musical form. With few exceptions, art song lay dormant from 1725 to around 1850. Before this time, most of Italian song literature was excerpted from operas. Many of the songs that are performed as ‘art songs’ today are actually arias from early Italian operas. Composers, with the exception of Barbara Strozzi, were focused primarily on their operatic literature. Italian art songs of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries were showcases for the voice, exploiting its musical and technical capabilities. For that reason, these songs focus very little on blend of poetic and musical elements, but are instead slanted toward featuring the voice as the primary performance medium. In the majority of early Italian music, the accompaniment provides support for the voice and little more, although it is difficult to make anything but generaliz...
What is opera? Opera is a theatrical work that was set to music for people to sing. People that sing regular music probably never tried to sing opera because the singers never had a microphone to use and the opera houses that they did the operas in was big so they had to reach the outer portions of the room. Opera houses were built for the extra space they need to put on the shows that they were doing. With extra space and more seats there need to be a change in how opera were done. Operas started to become more romantic and have more passion than ever before. With that came a style of singing using full rich broad tones and smooth phrasing, which is called bel canto style. The style is defined by beautiful singing.
College campuses have seen a rise, in the epidemic of Sexually transmitted diseases. Sexually transmitted diseases have quickly become a household name amongst Americans. The dangers and health issues related to acquiring a STD has been the reason why more attention has been brought to the STD epidemic. The reason for this attention is to hopefully, slow down the rate of STD’S amongst students. There is a very astonishing fact stated by the Agape Pregnancy Resource Center, “Nearly 80% percent of people that are infected with STD’s do not know it. ("Agape Pregnancy Resource Center") The use of condoms, knowing your status, and the practice of abstinence are very effective ways of avoiding contracting STD’s. If we do not make students aware quickly, our whole population may become infected.
In the 1985 movie, The Breakfast Club, five diverse detainees are forced to spend a Saturday in detention (Hughes, 1985). When they first arrive, their stereotypes and biases keep them blind to the fact they could possibly have empathy and understanding for the different dilemmas they are all going through. At first glance, The Breakfast Club is a heartwarming story of a group of adolescents who turn from being strangers to realizing they have a lot more in common than they thought. After looking beyond the surface, it is obvious the story consists of many problems adolescents have to deal with every day. The Breakfast Club exemplifies the major struggles teenagers must deal with such as adolescent egocentrism, identity confusion, parent-adolescent conflicts, and peer pressure.
Opera Reform began with the rise of the expressive style, and at the same time, there were signs of growing influence of middle-class ideas on the aristocratic standards of the early 18th century. The needs of opera were directed towards making a more natural design that had more flexibility within the structure. The content also needed to be deeper and more expressive, less laden with coloratura and more varied. Although the da capo aria was not abandoned, it was expanded and modified with more added forms. The recitatives and arias became more flexible and needed to carry on the action quickly, but realistically. The recitatives had more ac...
Though operatic practices had evolved greatly over a span of a hundred years, regardless the era, “Opera, by contrast, is notable for the multiplicity of forces that must be brought together openly for its making – for example, the financial powers that provide for its lavish needs; the diverse and often warring talents, drawn from a number of arts, who are expected to work together to create and perform its texts; the audiences who use it to satisfy both their aesthetic and their social cravings…The history of opera is thus not simply a conventional history of shifting period styles and competing national traditions, for it must accommodate countless “nonaesthetic” elements that help shape these styles and that these styles sometimes even shape in return.” (Lindenberger, Opera, The Extravagant Art, 1984, pp. 235-236)
The origin of opera was born in seventeenth century Italy. Wealthy Italian nobles had these “musical works” presented in their piazzas or courtyards. During this time extravagant entertainments, such as fireworks and other amazing effects along with music, singing, dancing and speeches were presented at regal weddings or to welcome important guests. These pre-op...
...rograms would prefer the youth to be mature enough to understand why their bodies are important and the consequences of sexual relations. Both can prevent teen pregnancies and diseases, but it depends on the individual and their values. However, the National Library of Medicine found, through observation and research, that “there was a positive correlation between abstinence program and teen pregnancy. In fact, teens that were taught abstinence only were more likely to become pregnant than those who were taught sex education.”
Abstinence is when you abstain from sexual activities. Abstaining from sexual activities is a great way to prevent teen pregnancy, and the risk of getting a sexually transmitted disease. In the past few years less sex and more condoms use has meant lower rates of teenage pregnancy and sexually transmitted disease. Abstinence is not a crime, as most teenagers and their peers seem to think. The actual crime among teens is not being able to fit in. Most teens have sex because of their peers being sexually active. The percentage of sexually active males declined from 57.4 percent to 48.8 percent, essentially erasing the gender gap. In high school students alone the rate for being sexually active went from being 66.7 percent to 60.9 percent in the years of 1991-1997. Abstinence is very important, but the peers of teenagers are just as important. " The Nurture Assumption " says that peer groups matter a lot more than parents influencing how kids turn out, because you can pass your genes, but not your values. CFOC’s National Survey of Family Growth stated that teens are having less sex. CFOC also stated that more teenagers surveyed that their closest friends were involved in some sort of sex education class, and they were not sexually active. Abstaining...
...tions and fifty percent of them were from young adults ages 15-24 (CDC). “Every year around nineteen million Americans get an STI infection and out of that nineteen million, nine million of them are young adults between the age 15 to 24” (STD Statistics). We want statistics like these to go down not stay the same or go up. They are not going to go down unless we do something about it. The more people getting viruses, the better chance our children are going to have sex with someone that has a virus and does not know it. There will be a domino effect passing viruses down from generation to generation if something does not change. It is a parent’s job to want the best for their children, education, health and knowing all about everything that can change their lives drastically. More sex education in schools could change the direction that people’s lives are heading.
Today in this society many teenagers are having sex and not realizing what could happened after they have done it. Parents and teachers aren’t teaching their children proper information about sex. Teenagers believe nothing can happen and that sex isn’t a probable cause. Unfortunately, there are many risks that come along with teen pregnancy many of those include a life surrounded by poverty, medical and health issues, less schooling along with more dropout rates, and lower career ambitions. Teen pregnancy has many causes such as no access to protection, wanting to tie down a guy, Missing love or attention from parents, peer pressure mixed with "trends”, and sadly teenagers most common, lack of knowledge.