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The Importance of Sex Education in School

In today's society, there is a continuing debate over sex education and its influence on our children. 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: if sex education is actually doing what it was set out to do. With teenage pregnancy rates higher than ever and the imminent threat of the contraction of STD's, such as HIV, the role of sex education in the school has been more important now than ever. By denying children sex education, you are in a sense sheltering them from the harsh realities they are bound to encounter in the future. Sex education has become a vital part of the present and by not providing this information, we'll be voluntarily putting our children in danger. Overall, I believe that sex education should be made mandatory in schools because of the lack of information that doesn’t seem to reach the children in the world fast enough.

With more and more teens being sexually active, it’s thought that they know everything they need to know about the consequences and what not, but that is not always true. In 2002, only 62% of sexually experienced female teens had received instruction about contraception before they first had sex, compared with 72% in 1995. This proves that an entire 18% of female teens didn’t know. This leads to my opinion on whether or not we should provide sex education in schools, which is that we should. I believe that if schools teach their students about sex, they will learn how to reduce the risks of potentially negative outcomes from sexual behavior, such as unwanted or unplanned pregnancies and infection with sexually transmitted diseases including HIV. Providing comprehensive sex education in schools has helped students by delaying the initiation of sex as well as reducing the frequency of sex, the number of new partners, and the incidence of unprotected sex, and/or increasing the use of condoms and contraception among sexually active participants. Without the proper sex education, some teenage girls end up pregnant because of many misunderstandings of sex, including my all time favorite: ‘you can’t get pregnant the first time’ and ‘it won’t happen to me’ (regarding getting pregnant). Sadly, teens believe these misconceptions which lead to many pregnancies and many other negative outcomes.

Even if schools begin to teach sex education regularly, a number of parents would rather teach their children themselves instead of relying on teachers to do so. In schools, some teachers tend to provide unreliable information about sex and contraceptives, which leads to parents teaching their children themselves. Many parents don’t know how to talk to their children about this topic, but it is an embarrassing conversation to have on both the parents’ side and the child’s. "You want to start these conversations early with your kids—before they find themselves in the circumstances where they’re having to make those healthy sexual decisions on their own" (oprah.com). Having ‘the talk’ with your children early on in life helps them with making good future decisions. "If you wait to have that one big talk when they're 13, 14, it's often too late" (oprah.com).

In our world today, young children get information about sex from a wide range of sources including each other, through the media, including advertising, television and magazines, as well as books and websites. Why should these children have to find this information themselves or why aren’t they learning the information at all? To help stop this, I believe that schools need to fund sex education so that these students can know what to do when making big decisions like having sex. I believe that if schools teach sex education, teens will be wiser and make smarter decisions when it comes to having sex at all or using the right contraceptives when doing so.

When kids rely on other sources like the media to find out information on sex, they ultimately think that this information is correct when most of the time it isn’t. In some reality television shows, for example, the Bachelor, or Temptation Island, males and females are put into unrealistic scenarios to look for ‘love’. The entire time throughout the show, it’s all about who has sex with whom and who got to kiss this person. When teens watch these shows, they get the wrong idea about what love really is and think that what they see on t.v. is what is expected.

Even though I think that sex education should be a necessity in schools, I believe that the parents should also play a role in doing so when their children have other questions. Some teens never get the sex talk from parents for a number of reasons. The most common reason that parents don’t even bring the subject up is because they find it embarrassing. Another reason is because some parents lack accurate information about sex. In most cases, the reason that parents don’t have ‘the talk’ is because they know that it is too late. ‘In a series of surveys with 141 parents and their teenage children, researchers found more than 40 percent of children had sexual intercourse before any discussion about condom use, sexually transmitted diseases, birth control or what to do if their partner refuses to use a condom’ (thirdage.com). In other cases, parents find that it is the schools place to teach the kids about the ‘birds and the bees’. Since the schools are there to teach students math, english, etc., why not sex as well?

Most people find that it is necessary to teach teens sex education in schools because of the number of pregnancies there have been in the past. A good 93% of Americans believe there should be a sex education course, while a total of 7% think that sex should be something that parents teach their children. I understand where that 7% of people are coming from because if it were me in their position, I would probably want to be the one to bring up the ‘birds and the bees’. Personally, I believe parents should teach their kids about sex, but by the way things have been going these past few years with the rise of teen pregnancies and the number of sexually transmitted diseases, I hold my true opinion on being for sex education in schools.

Another reason that parents want to be the ones to teach their kids about sex is because most schools teach abstinence-only, which teaches students to completely refrain from having sex, but doesn’t teach them about protection or any other things that are necessary for teens to learn. Yes, abstinence-only keeps teens from becoming pregnant at all, but kids aren’t always going to listen to their parents or follow the rules. ‘Nearly half (46%) of all 15–19-year-olds in the United States have had sex at least once’ (guttmacher.com).

Sex education is about developing young children's skills so that they make knowledgeable choices about their behavior, and feel confident and competent about acting on these choices. Teaching sex education in a classroom should be available to teach children about their bodies, sex, and the many consequences that come with having sex. We work hard to give our children the knowledge to succeed in this world, and this subject is just as important as any of the others that our children learn about. Giving teens access to accurate, reliable, and unbiased information will give them what they need to make choices about their bodies that will affect them possibly for the rest of their lives. If anything we can all agree on this: teenagers will have questions, be curious, and even be scared. Though they may not admit it, but they’re looking for answers from someone they can believe and trust to provide them with the knowledge they’re seeking about sex. And since they’re looking for answers, why not make sure they get the correct information from those that can really help them-such as parents, relatives, and educators. We will have laid the foundation for our teenagers to grow into adults with healthy self-images; well-informed and well-prepared not only for sex and the responsibilities that come along with it, but for the roller coasters that life will undoubtedly throw at them.