The Lack Of Sex Education

The Lack of Sex Education in Schools

“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.

Teens that have sex before getting married suffer from the possible consequences of sex. Teens getting pregnant suffer by having to take care of a baby at a young age and trying to stay in school, or they have to deal with dropping out of school and not having a diploma or degree. Then, the parents of the teen suffer because they have to help raise a baby almost as if it is their own. The parents of the teen also have to teach their teen how to raise the baby because the teen does not know what to do. People who get a virus have to deal with passing it on to others including their children, and they always have to think about how they will have the virus for the rest of their life because they were having sex with multiple people. The children of the person with the virus also suffer having to deal with the virus for the rest of their lives and then passing the virus on to their children when they get older. This chain reaction all starts with a lack of sex education in sc...

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...tions and fifty percent of them were from young adults ages 15-24 (CDC). “Every year around nineteen million Americans get an STI infection and out of that nineteen million, nine million of them are young adults between the age 15 to 24” (STD Statistics). We want statistics like these to go down not stay the same or go up. They are not going to go down unless we do something about it. The more people getting viruses, the better chance our children are going to have sex with someone that has a virus and does not know it. There will be a domino effect passing viruses down from generation to generation if something does not change. It is a parent’s job to want the best for their children, education, health and knowing all about everything that can change their lives drastically. More sex education in schools could change the direction that people’s lives are heading.