My research paper is about why high schools should provide condoms for students, along with comprehensive sexual education programs. I hope to enlighten the reader about sexual education in high school by answering these questions: How will providing condoms keep students safe? Will sexual education benefit kids? And finally, did not having sex ed affect the generation before us? My view is that most teens are going to have sex, it’s natural and instinctual, but making teens less ignorant about sex and provide them with a way to practice safer sex will result in less teenage pregnancies, STDs, and smarter choices regarding sex. The articles I chose are medically accurate and provide reasons to support sex ed programs and why it’s important to talk to teens about healthy sexual choices. Kieffer, Chris. "Sex ed debate: Teaching about contraception is a key divide." Northeast Mississippi Daily Journal (Tupelo, MS) 03 Oct. 2013: Points of View Reference Center. Web. 8 Nov. 2013. The Northeast Mississippi Daily Journal uses information from Mississippi to concur more youth are having sex and having babies in their state. Their solution is to install sex ed in their curriculum to reduce these numbers. Another thing it talks about how they have had abstinence-only sex ed for five years, so obviously that wasn’t working. I will use this study to demonstrate the need of comprehensive sex ed in school’s curriculum, not just prude old people telling teens not to have sex and they will go to Hell if they do. I believe this will show the need for real options in a state with the most sexually active and pregnant teenagers. "School Condom Availability." School Condom Availability. N.p., n.d. Web. 08 Nov. 2013. This article clearly states condo... ... middle of paper ... ...he article supports my viewpoint and provides new reasons to practice safer sex. Today our youth is overwhelmed to all kinds of hype and rumors about sex, and this article debunks those myths. Also, the headings of all the sections are questions, so you get the frequently asked questions and additional information. "Talking With Children About Sex." WebMD. WebMD, 28 May 2010. Web. 08 Nov. 2013. This article describes how to present sexual information to teens and why you should. It also includes information about the definition of sex and how to spot if a child has unsafe or abnormal sex habits, such as “angry sexual language, gestures, or touching to hurt others.” Most sex ed programs don’t talk about preventing sexual abuse in dating and strangers. I think it’ll help me to paint a clear picture of what goes on in high school, middle school, and how to prevent it.
Based on these statistics, teen pregnancy is obviously a large issue in this county. A possible solution to the issue would be that sex education could to be taught in junior and senior high schools and be taught by parents more often. By the time of sex education, a vast majority of students have already had sex. This may have played a part in Tony, from The Other Wes Moore, being a father at such a young age. The ultimately best solution to help stop teen pregnancy in this county alone is to provide a “sex clinic” to these teenagers. A safe sex clinic is a way of providing teenagers the facts of the real world and even offering various forms of birth control. As other solutions, parents need to have a sex talk with their children, and schools need to provide the option for a sex education more frequently. However, there is no way to mandate what parents teach to students, and it takes far too long to change a state's curriculum. That’s why, through this solution, the rate of teen births would show to decrease for the better.
How many girls have you see around school who are pregnant? Do you ever come to think that they may not have had the “sex talk” with their parents or any sort of sex education at school? “The United Stated still has the highest teen pregnancy rate of any industrialized country. About 40 percent of American women become pregnant before the age of 20. The result is about 1 million pregnancies each year among women ages 15 to 19.” (The Annie E. Casey Foundation) At the age 15-20 most teen males and females don’t have a stable job and are still going to school. There is much at risk when a male and female decide to have sexual intercourse. Having a sex education class would help decrease the teen pregnancy rate. Learning what one can do to prevent a teen pregnancy and the consequences that can lead up to it, will help reduce the amount of sexual activity among teens. Having a sex education class that is required will benefit the upcoming teens of the next generation. Some parents don’t want their teens to have premarital sex and some parents don’t want the schools to be the ones responsible to teach their kids about sex education because they feel like it’s their job. There has been much controversy on sex education being taught at school.
It has been almost thirty three years since the first federal funding was put to use in “. . . sex education programs that promote abstinence-only-until-marriage to the exclusion of all other approaches . . .” according to the article “Sex education” (2010) published by “Opposing Viewpoints in Context;” a website that specializes in covering social issues. Since then a muddy controversy has arisen over whether that is the best approach. On one hand is the traditional approach of abstinence (not having sex before marriage), and on the other is the idea that what is being done is not enough, and that there needs to be a more comprehensive approach. This entails not only warning against sex, but also teaching teens about how to have “Safe Sex” (“Sex Education,” 2010).
Today’s young Americans face strong peer pressure to be sexually active and engage themselves in risky behaviors (Merino 100-109). Anyone deciding to have sex must first think about all the risks involved. Kekla Magoon, author of Sex Education in Schools, says that “half of all teens aged 15 to 19 years old in the United States have had sex” (Magoon 64-65). It is currently not required by federal law for schools to teach Sex education and those few schools that do teach Sex education have the decision to determine how much information is allowed. Advocates from both sides of the Sex education debate agree that teens need positive influences in order to make practical decisions (Magoon 88-89). Opponents of Abstinence-only education believe it fails because it does not prepare teens for all the risks of sex (Magoon 64-65).
In the article, “More Schools to Teach Abstinence-Plus,” as seen on page A21A of the September 16, 2011 issue, author Morgan Smith tells her readers about new programs being introduced in West Texas to tech teenagers about not only abstinence, but additional how to practice safe sex. The article explains how teenage pregnancy rates in West Texas continue to spike despite the effort to push abstinence on teens. It explains in detail of a new sexual education program where teens are encouraged to choose abstinence but are educated in effective contraception as well. It covers schools in Midland, Texas and how endeavor to switch policy’s is embraced by the majority of community members as an active approach to decrease teen pregnancy. (Smith 1)
Two drastic Emergency Room cases were handled in 1998 at Mary Washington Hospital. Concerned mothers brought their 12 year old daughters into the hospital thinking they were suffering from severe stomach pain or even appendicitis…both girls were actually in labor (Abstinence, 2002). The United States has the highest teen pregnancy, birth, and abortion rates in the Western world (Planned Parenthood, 2003). Are teens getting enough knowledge on sex and how to prevent STDs and unwanted pregnancies? Another heartbreaking statistic is that teenagers have the highest rate of STDs of any age group, with one in four young people contracting an STD by the age of 21 (Sex-Ed Work, 2003). Is sex education really working in school? Or do we need to change the type of curricula that is taught? There is no question that sex education should be taught in schools, but the question is how? The purpose of this paper is to determine which curricula of sex education should be taught in schools to be most effective in lowering STD and pregnancy rates among teenagers.
Students should be informed about more than just “don’t have sex” because eventually it is going to happen and they need to be educated on the proper way to handle the situations. Because students are mostly taught abstinence it has created the situation to where researchers find” Abstinence-only education, instead of reducing the spread of sexually transmitted diseases, has made teenagers and young adults more vulnerable to ST...
From a young age, children are bombarded by images of the rich and the famous engaging in torrid public affairs or publicly discussing their increasingly active sex lives. No longer is sex education left to teachers and parents to explain, it is constantly in our faces at the forefront of our society. Regardless of sex education curriculums and debates about possible changes, children and teenagers are still learning everything they think there is to know about sex from very early on in their young lives. However, without responsible adults instructing them on the facts about sex, there are more likely to treat sex in a cavalier and offhanded fashion. According to Anna Quindlen’s essay Sex Ed, the responsibility of to education children about sex is evenly distributed between teachers and parents.
In the United States, there is a rising problem that is not going anywhere anytime soon, that is if we, as citizens, don 't change it. This problem is causing billions of dollars and people 's futures all because schools would rather teach ignorance than the truth. What’s the problem? Sex education. Although sex education may not seem like a rising conflict, it is actually one of the top controversial topics in our country regarding education. According to Brigid McKeon, “Each year, U.S. teens experience as many as 850,000 pregnancies, and youth under age 25 experience about 9.1 million sexually transmitted infections (STIs)” (McKeon). This number is so unbelievable to any sane person, but somehow schools still won 't take the initiative to teach realistic sex education. Sex education can be taught in two different procedures- comprehensive or abstinence only. The difference between the two methods is that comprehensive sex education teaches abstinence as a secondary choice, so that teens who decide not to wait are well educated on how to keep themselves protected. Comprehensive sex education should be required in every single public school because it is the most effective method on how to keep teenagers well informed and prepared.
Martinez, Gladys, Joyce Abma, and Casey Copen. “Educating Teenagers About Sex In The United States”. CDC.GOV. Center of Disease Control and Prevention, 15 Sept. 2010. Web. 09 Feb.2014
“Sex sells.” This is a common phrase used very often in social media and entertainment industries. Today, the youth generation is highly exposed to social media and products of entertainment industries from music to movies on the big screen. Most of the products produced by these industries are sexually explicit, and they tend to send the wrong messages about sexual behavior. Adolescents almost spend the same amount of time watching television and engaging with social media as they do in an educational environment. Therefore, the best way to tackle the misconceptions of sex among adolescents is to provide sex education in school. Sex education should be taught in school in order to provide a mutual learning experience for adolescents among
Three million teenagers will contract a sexually transmitted disease and one in three women will become pregnant before they are twenty years old. Teens are contracting sexually transmitted diseases and getting pregnant at an alarming rate causing the government, schools, and parents to scratch their heads. America is the country with the highest teen pregnancy rate in the world. Many are wondering what can be done to stop this. A debate has been going on about whether abstinence only education is doing any good for high school students in America. Abstinence only education teaches teenagers to abstain from all sexual acts until they are married. It does not teach about pregnancy or the different types of contraceptives that are available to prevent pregnancy. On the other hand, there is safe sex education. Safe sex education teaches teenagers facts about intercourse they need to know, acknowledges the potential consequences or risks of sexual behavior, and helps them make better decisions to protect themselves and their bodies.
“Forty-one percent of teens ages 18-19 said they know nothing about condoms, and seventy-five percent said they know nothing about the contraceptive pill” (Facts on American Teens). Even if schools taught just abstinence it still would not be enough. “In 2007, a study showed that abstinence only programs have no beneficial impact on the sexual behavior of young people” (Facts on American Teens). Sex education is not taken as seriously as it should be in schools, it is treated like it is not a big deal. Schools should require a sex education class that specifically teaches students about sex and goes into depth of all the possible consequences because of the high pregnancy, abortion, and virus rates.
The issue of sex education in schools is going to be there for many years to come. The problem is that people want answers that can’t be talked about until more research is done on the effects of sex education. Parents, teachers, schools and students all have on common goal and that is to find a way to accurately discuss sex education in schools. There are problems with that because of all of the arguments surrounding the issue and all the problems with trying to come to a conclusion about it. Since the teen pregnancy rates have more than double and STD cases are the highest among teens we obviously see a need for it, but don’t know how to go about it. Once we research the long term effects of sex education and then come to agreement on what should be taught in schools the sex education problem in America will diminish. We need to break down the educational borders and try to look at all the perspectives to reach the common goal.
The condoms display in the Hidden Heroes: the Genius of Everyday Things exhibit is a showcase that would cause an individual to wonder about adolescents’ overall knowledge of human sexuality. In today’s society, children are susceptible to learning about such a delicate topic not only from their families and peers, but through the media as well. These sources often provide misrepresentations of the information due to ignorance and biased views. Therefore, in order to inform individuals more accurately, sex education programs have been created with the intention to be implemented into schools across the country. This has led up to being one of the most controversial issues hovering over educational institutions, where the inclusion of such programs has been hotly debated. However, recently, the dispute is not so much about whether sex education should be taught in schools, but rather what content should be taught and what approach should be taken.