Abstinence-Only Education Should Not Be Taught In Schools Essay

We all want what’s best for our teens, and sometimes, the hardest part is deciding what is best. We could teach our children that sex is a very special thing that should be saved for marriage, and leave it at that. We wouldn’t inspire any crazy ideas or experimentation, we would tell them the risks and then they would know why sex before marriage is a bad idea. Or, we could tell them how to protect themselves from the risk of sex, it wouldn’t strictly teach teens to abstain from sex, but they would know how to protect themselves if they did try to experiment. For years, teens have been taught that the only way to avoid the dangers of sex is to not have it and that just hasn’t been working out. Therefore, abstinence-only education shouldn’t be taught in schools.

Abstinence-only curricula shouldn’t be taught in schools because it is morally wrong. It is hypocritical, the people who are in charge of deciding what type of sexual education teenagers are receiving are well past the pressures of being a teen themselves. They are placing lofty standards on teenagers, and some of them didn’t hold up these standards themselves. It is unrealistic for adults to expect all

Teens walk out of abstinence-only classes having been taught that condoms are dangerous, instead of the importance of using them correctly and consistently if they decide that abstinence isn’t the path for them. In her article “Mixed Marks for Sex Education Classes,” Karen Kaplan reveals that only 70 percent of students are taught the importance of proper condom use, 60 percent are taught where they can find them, and a measly 54 percent learn how to use them correctly. Kaplan goes on to say that 95 percent of students learn about STDs. That leaves 25 percent of the future of our nation without knowing where to go to get protection from STDs, and 5 percent are not being taught about STDs at