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Benefits of sex education to children
Benefits of sex education to children
The need for a comprehensive sexual education
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Sex ed as a joke is nothing new. It’s so widespread that even Mean Girls poked fun at it when a gym teacher tells a group of students, “If you have sex, you will get pregnant and die”. It sounds ridiculous, but it’s not too far off from what some children are being taught. Sex education in the US does not provide kids with the information they need to have a healthy relationship with their bodies and with sex. There’s a lot of benefits to teaching comprehensive sex education but today I’m going to focus on how it decreases the rate of teen pregnancy.
In order for us to fully understand how this is possible, we must first discuss some of the problems surrounding young women and unplanned pregnancies. Second, we’ll explore why the US continues to have the highest rates of teen pregnancy in the
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According to Advocates for Youth, “the committee found that 80% of the most popular abstinence-only programs used curricula that distorted information about the effectiveness of contraceptives, blurred religion and science, treated stereotypes about gender as scientific fact and contained basic scientific errors”. Most children who participate in these current abstinence-only programs are taught to associate sex with something negative if it is practiced outside of a marriage. Because of this, when teens do decide to have sex—and a lot of them are going to have sex—they are less likely to use contraception and more likely to practice high-risk sexual behaviors. And it’s not their fault. They haven’t been told anything about sex except that they shouldn’t do it. This misinformation or lack thereof is one of the biggest reasons the US has the highest rates of teen pregnancy in the industrial world.
So how do we change this? We start by implementing comprehensive sex-education in schools as well as popularizing the use of contraceptives among
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.
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)
The birth rate among teens in the United States has declined 9% from 2009 to 2010, a historic low among all racial and ethnic groups, with the least being born in 2010; and in 2011 the number of babies born to adolescents aged 15-19 years of age was 329,797 (“Birth Rates for U.S.”, 2012). Although the decline in unwanted and unplanned teen births is on the rise the United States continues to be among the highest of industrialized countries facing this problem. This is a prevailing social concern because of the health risks to these young mothers as well as their babies. Teens at higher risk of becoming pregnant are raised at or below the poverty level by single parents; live in environments that cause high levels of stress (i.e., divorce, sexual psychological and physical abuse); are influenced by peers or family members that are sexually active; and lack parental guidance that would direct them to be responsible and self-controlled.
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
"Teen pregnancy rates are higher among those who receive an abstinence-only education than those who get comprehensive sex ed," David Nocenti, executive director of the Union Settlement Association, a community group in Harlem, New York, wrote in the New York Daily News in 2012 (Abstinence-only Education). Teaching Sex Education will not only help the young adults who would like to protect themselves when engaging in sexual activity, it will also help those who didn 't have the choice. Accurate, balanced sex education, including information about contraception and condoms, is a basic human right of youth. Such education helps young people to reduce their risk of potentially negative outcomes, such as unwanted pregnancies and sexually transmitted infections (STIs). Such education can also help youth to enhance the quality of their relationships and to develop decision-making skills that will prove invaluable over life. Federal policymakers have provided large amounts of funding for Abstinence-only Education (Abstinence-only Education). Abstinence-only programs are geared to prevent teens, and sometimes all unmarried people, from engaging in any sexual activity. Teenagers live in a sexually oriented world. They are pressured into having sex or talk about it with their friends, and think it 's acceptable. Teaching these girls how to properly protect themselves is imperative to prevent future headaches associated with teen pregnancy and STI. If taught to protect themselves, then at least their parents can sleep well at night knowing that their child is not going to get pregnant due to lack of
The government likes to pretend that if high school students get taught the “abstinence-only” method they would never think of taking part in sexual activities. Statistically this is incorrect. According to the Center for Disease Control and Prevention, “56 percent of high school students are virgins”(Martin). For the 56 percent abstinence only is doing them well, but there are still 44 percent of high school students engaging in sex without knowing the precau...
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.
Thesis Statement: Within America, there is a teen pregnancy epidemic across all socioeconomic backgrounds, presenting commonalities as to the causes and ramifications of adolescents emerging as a growing parental population.
Sex education is an aspect of life that affects everyone, and the fact that it is vainly dismissed is flawed. Policies so far in school seem to be changing into better programs, but sex education is also affected by the parents perspective. Kids being taught about sex education at a young age is a good thing, for in this subject ignorance is not always bliss. Hopefully the nation develops into adoptive this view in all
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.
“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.
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).
In the U.S., more than 750,000 girls ages 15-19 become pregnant every year. More than 80 percent of these are unintended pregnancies. (Lorrie) Sex education and how it should be taught has been a controversial issue for many years. This is such a hot topic because everyone wants to find the best method to teach sex education so that children will be well informed and able to take care of their bodies and health. The need to teach children sex education will continue to be an ongoing issue and is not something that cannot be ignored. Educating students on sex education in school will ensure students are receiving correct accurate information.