Sex Education in the United States
Imagine stumbling through a very dark room, unsure of what is in there, but about to make a decision that could potentially change your life forever. This dark room and decision represent someone about to have sex for the first time, after having little knowledge on what sex truly is and the consequences that often times accompany it. Sexual education has been a very big issue for debate in schools all across America. Abstinence-only sex education is a type of instruction where students are taught solely to remain abstinent, which means waiting to have sex until marriage. In these programs, they learn very little information on any type of contraception or sexually transmitted diseases. On the other hand,
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While some sexually transmitted diseases are easily curable with a dose of antibiotics, some can be deadly, even if they are found and treated. Even the curable ones can cause potentially life threatening damages if left untreated. Because of the negative connotation associated with STD’s, adolescents may be too scared to go to the doctor if they begin noticing symptoms. Other students may be completely oblivious to what potential symptoms of sexually transmitted diseases are, which is why comprehensive sex education is so important; it includes information on these diseases, and open discussion about them will help adolescents become more comfortable talking about them, so they will not be fearful to go to the doctor.
The Human Immunodeficiency Virus (HIV) is a sexually transmitted disease that often times turns into Acquired Immunodeficiency Syndrome (AIDS), which is deadly. According to the Centers of Disease Control and Prevention, “More than 1.2 million people in the United States are living with HIV infection, and almost 14% are unaware of their infection”. This large amount of Americans living with this disease is a very scary fact. With more comprehensive sexual education programs intact, more individuals will be aware of this disease and how to prevent it and avoid getting it
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This number shows that young people are not taking the proper precautions to keep themselves safe. This can very likely be traced back to being uninformed on how to properly protect oneself. A WebMD article regarding the issue of abstinence vs. sexual education provided a testimonial about a high school in San Francisco that was given a lecture about sex, and it focused greatly on abstinence. According to a fifteen year old student, the only mention of contraception was, “’Condoms can 't stop AIDS all the time and won 't prevent pregnancy all the time’". If this is the only information students are receiving about contraceptives, it is nearly impossible for them to know exactly what they are, let alone how to properly use them. While AIDS is obviously one of the worst sexually transmitted diseases, it is not the only one. Other STD’s, such as chlamydia and gonorrhea, are much more common among teenagers. According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, “In 2012, 1,002,692 cases of chlamydial infection were reported among persons under 25 years of age, representing 70% of all reported chlamydia cases”. It is essential for all students to be better informed on all types of sexually transmitted diseases, along with the symptoms and treatments. Just because they are not exactly deadly
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.
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...
During the 1980s, efforts increased to alert the public to the dangers of human immunodeficiency virus (HIV), other sexually transmitted diseases (STDs), and unintended pregnancy, yet these problems have increased. Adolescents and young adults have been especially hard hit. Pregnancy and birth rates among teenagers are at their highest levels in two decades.
In today’s school systems, students are taught the basics: math, history, language arts, and science. However, what they are also “taught” is sex education. Currently, when people think of how they were taught sex education in high school, most would say something along the lines of that they were taught the anatomy, and they were taught to never actually use it. This approach to sex education has been going on for decades, and despite being proven unsuccessful countless times, continues to be taught in this fashion because this is what makes the people happy. There have been numerous attempts to try and change this system to something that would benefit teenagers, but these attempts never were able to be put into affect due a laundry list
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.
Not surprisingly the lack of useful sexual information is one of the reasons of the spreading sex related diseases. According to The American Social Health Association (1998) each year there are near ten million of new cases of sexually transmitted diseases among the teenage...
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.
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.
The glamorous side of sex is everywhere; music, tv shows, movies and social media. To a mature adult, it is easy to ignore the sexual messages in those outlets. However, to a teenager, going through mental and physical changes and peer pressure, it is extremely easy to fall for what is shown to “cool.” Everyone has fallen for half truths to be cool in their teenage life. It just so happens that teen pregnancies and STDs are not one of those things that one can simply walk away from. Babies and STDs leave a lasting effect on everyone involved. The National Conference of State Legislatures states:
Sex education has been a taboo subject for a long time, even out of schools. Usually an ignored topic of discussion, when adults would be asked such questions by younger individuals the answers were usually misinformation and complex euphemisms. This strategy, use merely so the adult avoided embarrassing themselves, would only further confuse the person asking and it would not even answer the original question. Such examples include babies being brought to the parents by a stork, the birds and the bees, and naming the sexual organs after objects. Due to culture, such customs have been hard to get rid of and improve upon, especially with many of this shame originating from organized religion. In recent years though, conservatism on this education
Many believe sex and gender are the same but in reality they differ greatly. Gender takes in consideration what groups deem as normal behavior for a male and female. But sex is what your body parts consist of, your reproduction organs and a penis or vagina (Henslin, 2015, p. 291). You come into this world with a sex, but the world around you influences whether you choose to express yourself in a feminine or masculine way. Where you are in the world impacts what you and your society view as correct behavior for men and women.
Before moving on, one must know that sex education is about, but not limited to the discussion of sexual intercourse. As a Buzzle article states, it involves a multitude of topics that introduce human sexual behaviors such as puberty, sexual health, sexual reproduction, sexuality, and more (Iyer). If formally received in school, these topics are brought up and discussed at age-appropriate times over the course of children’s junior high and high school education. Moreover, as I have introduced earlier, the way sex education should be taught is divided into two approaches. It is between taking either a conservative, abstinence-only approach or a more liberal, comprehensive approach. Abstinence-only education, approaches students by stressing the importance of “no sex before marriage” as be...
The need for sex education is very questionable in today’s society. An article by Pamela DeCarlo, from the Centre for AIDS Prevention Studies, discusses why sex education is needed in schools. She asks why education on this subject is needed and if will help or hurt today’s children. Her view of the issue is that kids do need to have education to help to protect them but that it isn’t enough to prevent them from receiving STD’s and becoming pregnant. “Knowledge alone is not enough to change behaviors.” DeCarlo also says that, “Programs that rely mainly on conveying information about sex or moral precepts-how...
I believe that schools should teach sexual education. I think this because kids that are in school during this age do know or respect the dangers of being sexual active. They don 't know what it means to be protected, They will know about their own bodies and that of other genders. I believe they will have a new found respect for themselves and others. Teaching about it encourages students to develop themselves into better people. Anyone who values themselves and others are better equipped to develop great relationships with others. Pupils are able to take great positive approaches to managing their lives and develop skills that are needed to prepare them for the challenges that lay ahead. Not all parents inform their children about sexual
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).