The Importance of Sex Education in Schools and at Home

Sex education is imperative and necessary, but most teenagers finish sex education classes with a faint view of sexuality and without a good base knowledge of contraception or safe-sex practices. Instead, teens only learn that they should not have sex until they are married. Abstinence-only programs in public schools have become popular due to government funding millions of dollars to schools that teach the programs. These programs have the good intentions of convincing young people to wait until marriage before becoming intimate, but are not fully accomplishing this goal and are inconsistent by the one sided viewpoint they support.
In 1996, the United States government started giving special funding to states that offered abstinence-only programs in public schools. Since then, countless amount of tax-payer money has been given to states to promote abstinence-only programs (Brody, 2004). To receive the funds, schools must agree to follow a certain set of guidelines. These rules indicate that a school’s abstinence-only program must have as its exclusive purpose teaching the social, psychological, and health benefits by abstaining from sexual activity. Students are taught that they can undergo harmful effects if they choose to deflower themselves before marriage and that the standard is for students not to involve themselves in sexual activity and for adults to have sex only while married (Impacts, 2007). Schools receiving these government funds are only teaching student to “just say no" to sex until they are married, but this concept is so farfetched because we live in an imperfect society. Some states such as Ohio, New York and Virginia have refused the federal funds so that their schools can determine their own ways to teach s...

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...ll contract sexual diseases because they engage in oral and anal sex. In most teenager mind if they are not being physically being penetrated then they have not done anything wrong or harmful.
Parents and guardians should be the key instructors of sex education for their children. Honest, open communication between parents and children throughout childhood, pre-teen, adolescent and young adulthood can help young people to mature into sexually healthy adults. The primary goal of sex education in the schools should be to help and encourage young people to build a foundation as they mature into sexually healthy adults. These programs should assist young people in understanding a positive view of sexuality, provide them with information and skills about taking care of their themselves and push them towards making decisions about solving problems now and in the future.