Sex Education

1103 Words3 Pages
bulb-icon

Recommended: Effects of sex education

Sex Education

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.

The first type of curricula is abstinence-only. Abstinence-only based curricula is taught to more than 50 percent of students worldwide (Sex in Review, 2003). Abstinence programs teach teens how to say no. It does not teach them about STDs and how to protect themselves, therefore keeping them in the dark about sex. This type of curricula typically uses fear and shame to encourage premarital abstinence. It usually provides a distorted view of sex and can lead to sexual anxiety. Students are taught misinformation and lies; You will learn that sex is horrible unless it takes place in a monogamous marriage. President Bush asked Congress for a thirty-three per...

... middle of paper ...

....) Retrieved April 23, 2003 from http://www.advocatesforyouth.org/publications/factsheet/fssexcur.htm

I used this website for studies showing how comprehensive based programs are proven effective in lowering STD’s and unwanted pregnancies.

Sex education in schools. (n.d.) Retrieved April 8, 2003 from http://www.plannedparenthood.org/vox/sexedschool.html

I used this to show how Congress is asking for a raise in abstinence programs when those types of programs haven’t even been proven to help teens.

Zwillich, Todd. (1994). Parents Want More Comprehensive Sex Education in Schools.

Retrieved April 23, 2003 from http://wwwbiology.ucsd.edu/classes/bild36.FA00/extra_html/sexand_school.html

I used this to show what type of education parents would like their children to have in schools today to help the sexual transmitted disease rates decline.

Show More
Related

  • Annotated Bibliography: Advocates For Youth By Sue Alford

    806 Words  | 2 Pages

    ... abstinence provides such as a decreased risk in contracting STIs and HIV. Lowen has a B.A in English and attended graduate school for communications at Syracuse University. She also received the Exceptional Merit in Media Award from the National Women 's Political Caucus in 2009. Throughout her piece, she states that abstinence promotes focus in school and decreases a teen’s emotional vulnerability. She also adds that abstinence is free and doesn’t come with any side effects, whereas other contraceptives do such as birth control pills. I will use this source to support my counterargument and to emphasize the importance of abstinence, especially when it is a personal choice. I will also use this information to explain why abstinence and comprehensive education should be taught together in order to have an effective sexual education course in middle and high schools.

    Read More

  • Abstinence-Only vs. Comprehensive Sex Education

    2387 Words  | 5 Pages

    "US Government Should Stop Funding Abstinence-Only Education: Virginity Pledge Ineffective." Reproductive Health Matters Nov. 2009: 223. Academic OneFile. Web. 4 Apr. 2012.

    Read More

  • Be Informed: Have the Sex Talk with Your Kids

    785 Words  | 2 Pages

    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...

    Read More

  • Persuasive Essay About Sex Education

    1144 Words  | 3 Pages

    Scientifically, abstinence-only programs do not have better results than comprehensive programs. Many supporters of abstinence-only programs favor a specific study on the results of abstinence-only that was conducted by the National Campaign to Prevent Teen Pregnancy by the use of surveys. The results of the survey showed that students who were more religious had more conservative views on sex, leading to a longer period of time before having sex. Another study that is favored by abstinence-only supporters is a study that was done in 2001 whose results show that students who

    Read More

  • Analysis Of Sex Education

    1468 Words  | 3 Pages

    What is acceptable when it comes to teaching kids about sex education? “What Schools Should Teach Kids About Sex” by Jessica Lahey uses more of a logical approach to the issues of sexual education given to adolescence, compared to “Sex Education Is One Thing” by Anna Quindlen which tells more of her personal story and opinion using pathos to connect to the audience. After reading both articles about sex education, it is clear that there are many different interpretations of what qualifies as sex education, who is qualified to teach it, and what should be included in the curriculum. Both writers believe that there should be more sex education taught to high school kids but they go about it in different ways, using rhetorical appeals of logic versus pathos.

    Read More

  • Sex Education For Public Schools

    1534 Words  | 4 Pages

    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...

    Read More

  • Sexual Education in Schools

    876 Words  | 2 Pages

    ...s have come up false or misleading. Sexual Education teaches adolescents about sex, not try to demonize it like abstinence programs do. If sexual education was properly taught in all schools, teen pregnancy and STD rates would drop significantly.

    Read More

  • Teenagers Need Safe Sex Education

    1128 Words  | 3 Pages

    "The History of Federal Abstinence-Only Funding." Advocates for Youth. July 2008. Web. 9 Mar. 2015.

    Read More

  • Comprehensive Sex Education In Schools

    1047 Words  | 3 Pages

    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.

    Read More

  • Comprehensive Sex Education

    930 Words  | 2 Pages

    Most adolescents have received some style of abstinent solely education, primarily used in American public schools, comprehensive sexual education is understood to be the foremost effective and established to better assist youth in making healthier choices. Every year within the US, teens experience as many as 850,000 pregnancies and youth under age twenty five experience about 9.1 million STIs (Advocates for Youth, n.d.); for this reason we should use comprehensive sex education in our faculties so that our youth may be educated on reducing these rates. The Sexuality Information and Education Council of the United States (SIECUS) were developed by a national task force of consultants in adolescent development, education and health care and have created pointers for comprehensive sexual education (CSE). Comprehensive sex education is being taught in faculties via formal instruction and refers to sex educations for youngsters from grades K-12.

    Read More

  • Teaching Sex Education in Schools

    2307 Words  | 5 Pages

    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...

    Read More

  • The Argument of Sex Education in School

    1223 Words  | 3 Pages

    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...

    Read More

  • Sex Education: A Necessity in Public Schools

    1110 Words  | 3 Pages

    Sexual Education: A Necessity in Public Schools Today? & nbsp; Alice was a normal sixteen year old; she loved school, her family and her boyfriend. She was having a blast during her Junior year, until the day she found out about the "accident". Alice and her boyfriend, Brad, had been together for over two years, and they planned to get married. Both of them felt they were ready to have a sexual affair. However, neither of them knew anything about birth control or the dangers of having unprotected sex.

    Read More

  • Sex Education : A Hot Topic Of Debate

    911 Words  | 2 Pages

    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).

    Read More

  • The Importance of Sex Education

    700 Words  | 2 Pages

    Sex education should be increased in schools. Nearly one million women under the age of 20 get pregnant each year. That means 2800 women get pregnant each day. If students are educated about the effects sex has on their lives, it lessens their chance of having children at an early age. Knowledge about sex can also lessen the chance of kids receiving STDS.

    Read More

More about Sex Education

Open Document