Across the country, sexual education classes take on varying forms. Some schools only teach about abstinence, eliminating critical information about student safety and well-being, leaving them at risk for sexually transmitted diseases, unplanned pregnancy, and dating and relationship violence. Others teach comprehensive sex education (CSE), a holistic approach to sex education that gives youth the proper foundation to make the choices right for them. CSE includes the expected content on pregnancy and STD prevention, but it also teaches about violence prevention, healthy relationships, diversity, and self-advocacy. Comprehensive sexual education is the best way to prepare youth not only for a healthy and positive relationship with sexuality …show more content…
Children start to exhibit awareness of their gender by ages 2-3, and many become aware of their sexual orientation as they enter adolescence (The Human Development Teaching & Learning Group, 2020). This shows that identities are not chosen and therefore cannot be changed through education. Queer youth understand they are different from the start, so CSE gives queer-identifying youth the language to describe themselves (Patkin, 2023) and reaffirms cisgender or heterosexual youth in their own identities. Comprehensive sexual education helps all youth by empowering them with accurate and up-to-date information, leaving students affirmed in their identities and equipped to make safe and healthy decisions. Comprehensive sex education teaches youth safe sex practices, which prevents STDs, unwanted pregnancy, and domestic violence. It also teaches youth proper consent, communication, empathy, and conflict-resolution skills. When combined with lessons about diverse sexual and gender identities, queer youth are empowered with proper language and education to communicate their identities, and schools become safer, more accepting
This is a website page edited by Sue Alford, the Editor and Director of Public Information Services for Advocates of Youth, a nonprofit organization in Washington D.C. This advocacy group promotes efficient sexual education and is dedicated towards STI and HIV/AIDS prevention. Alford contrasts comprehensive and abstinence-only education through a descriptive table that lists how they differ in curriculum, methods of teaching, and attitudes towards sexual activity in adolescents. This source will help me see the distinctions between the two methods of education, allowing me to interpret the pros and cons of each.
Since the HIV/AIDS epidemic began in the U.S. in the early 1980s the issue of sex education for American youth has had the attention of the nation. There are about 400,000 teen births every year in the U.S, with about 9 billion in associated public costs. STI contraction in general, as well as teen pregnancy, have put the subject even more so on the forefront of the nation’s leading issues. The approach and method for proper and effective sex education has been hotly debated. Some believe that teaching abstinence-only until marriage is the best method while others believe that a more comprehensive approach, which includes abstinence promotion as well as contraceptive information, is necessary. Abstinence-only program curriculums disregard medical ethics and scientific accuracy, and have been empirically proven to be ineffective; therefore, comprehensive sex education programs which are medically accurate, science-based and empirically proven should be the standard method of sex education for students/children in the U.S.
The program called Don’t Be a Sexual Statistic (DBASS), is based on the HYA and implements their mission to provide truthful information regarding reproductive health education in the North Carolina school system. This program requires all seven to ninth graders to have a class every semester or year pertaining to each grade level, teaching the students about reproductive health education. The target group for DBASS, is young children to teenagers from ages twelve to fifteen. This focuses on seven to ninth graders in the North Carolina school system. With students today ages fifteen to nineteen having sex a least once (Guttmacher.org, 2010), shows that the old ways of teaching health education needs to be revised. This statistics shows that increasing knowledge with comprehensive sex and reproduction health could help lower the statistics and help the students make wiser decision in their future.
Sex education in schools now seems to be more and more of a controversial issue. People are arguing over what the curriculum should be in sex education, if it should be taught in schools or at home by parents and the main point of this paper if sex education is actually doing what it was set out to do. The idea behind this paper is to determine if sex education in schools really does keep down the amount of teens with STD’s or who become pregnant.
Sex education is about informing students about sex so that they can make educated decisions when the time comes to have sex. Sex education helps students protect themselves from unintended pregnancies, STDs, and HIV/AIDS. Students should leave a sex education course with the right tools so they make informed decisions about their sexual health and well-being. The goal of sex education is to provide a student with as much information as possible so that they can use the skills they learned in class for the rest of their lives.
Sex and relationship education (SRE) supports children through their moral, physical and psychological aspects of growing up to be an adult, and making sure they have knowledge on relationships, sex, human sexuality and sexual health (Sex Education Forum, 2010). There are three main elements in SRE, the first element is attitudes and values, which is about developing positive values and being able to consider moral issues before they make their decisions on having intercourse (Kirby, 2007). The second element is personal and social skills, which is about teaching children to have the confidence to value themselves and others, to become respectful of individual conscience and the skills to judge the kind of relationship they want; the third element is about accessing the knowledge and understanding of human sexuality, reproduction, sexual health, emotions and relationships (Kirby, 2007). The potential effect of SRE should be seen in these three areas, which include reduction in teenage pregnancy, and the chances of getting sexually transmitted diseases (STDs) and being sexually assaulted, etc. SRE can either be given at home to the child by parents, in school by teachers, or in youth organizations, alternative educational institutions, or youth offending organizations by Shine staff or trained peer educators and volunteers (Levy 1992).
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.
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.
Sex Education in Public Schools Sexual education is the teaching of sexual identity, intimacy, and sexual intercourse. Its main purpose is to prevent children and teens from contracting sexually transmitted diseases, such as HIV and AIDS, and to protect them from any possible negative outcomes from sexual behavior.(35) There are two types of sexual education: comprehensive and abstinence only. Comprehensive sex education covers sexually transmitted disease, sexuality, abstinence, and any outcomes related to sexual behavior. Abstinence only sex education teaches kids to not have sex until marriage.
Sex among teenagers is one of the most controversial topics of our time. The teen pregnancy and STD rates in the United States alone have become a major problem over the years. Despite these skyrocketing sex cases, sexual education is not being taught in some schools, and the ones that do are extremely limited. Parents, the government, organizations, and school boards do not teach the proper curriculum necessary for students to thoroughly understand sexual behavior. This essay will explain the need for proper sexual education in our schools.
Teaching about sexuality urges students to build up a lucid arrangement of individual qualities based after regarding themselves as well as other people. Students who comprehend and esteem themselves as well as other people are better prepared to create significant and conscious connections. They can take a positive way to deal with dealing with their lives and build up the vital abilities to set them up for present and future life challenges. The fitting kind of sex education that ought to be taught in U.S. public schools keeps on being a noteworthy point of verbal confrontation, which is propelled by the high teen pregnancy and birth rates in the U.S., contrasted with other developed countries. Quite a bit of this open deliberation has focused
Why Sex Education Should be Improved Sex education should educate youth about their bodies, sexual intercourse, and diseases, but for the past several years, a debate over which two types of sex education are more effective and appropriate: comprehensive or abstinence. Though abstinence is more common than comprehensive, comprehensive sex education should be executed throughout schools to offer growing adolescents the information they need to know about themselves and protection. Comprehensive sex education provides “information and concerns about abstinence, body image, contraception, gender, human growth and development, human reproduction, pregnancy, relationships, safer sex (prevention of sexually transmitted infections), sexual attitudes and values, sexual anatomy and physiology, sexual behavior, sexual health, sexual orientation, and sexual pleasure” (Implementing Sex Education). And though this form proves to be more effective, over half of the high schools in America teach abstinence as the most effective way to avoid pregnancy and diseases with little to no knowledge of how to protect oneself when they do become sexually active.
Why should comprehensive sex education be allowed in schools? Should teens be exposed to comprehensive sex education? Sex education should be taught in school because it give children stable and accurate information , it informs them of the danger and diseases associated with sex, and it teaches them about safe sex options.
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.
Sex education in our schools has been a hot topic of debate for decades. The main point in question has been whether to utilize comprehensive sex education or abstinence-only curriculum to educate our youth. The popularity of abstinence-only curriculum over the last couple of decades has grown largely due to the United States government passing a law to give funding to states that teach the abstinence-only approach to sex education. But not teaching our children about sex and sexuality is not giving them the information they need to make well educated decisions. Sex education in our schools should teach more than just abstinence-only because these programs are not proven to prevent teens from having sex. Children need to be educated on how to prevent contracting sexually transmitted diseases and unwanted pregnancies and be given the knowledge to understand the changes to their bodies during puberty. According to the Guidelines for Comprehensive Sexuality Education: Kindergarten-12th Grade from the Sexuality Information and Education Council of the United States (SIECUS), comprehensive sex education “should be appropriate to age, developmental level, and cultural background of students and respect the diversity of values and beliefs represented in the community” (SIECUS).