In tenth grade, I had two days of sexual education in my health class. They consisted of our teacher telling us how if you had sex before you were married, you would contract an STD or get pregnant. He said this as an absolute; there was no chance that these things wouldn’t happen to you. He then showed us slides of what different sexually transmitted diseases looked like, and that was the extent of my public school sexual education. This is a huge problem because at some point everyone has to learn about “the birds and the bees.” There have been many debates about how or even if sexual education should be taught in public high schools, and if it should be taught, there is even more disagreement on at what age and in what manner it should be
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While initially this claim makes sense, once you do even a little bit of research you find this not to be true. In 2007, two different studies were published about the effects of abstinence-only programs versus comprehensive programs. The first study conducted by the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services found that abstinence-only courses did not promote abstinence at all. In fact, students that took these courses were compared to a control group who had no sexual education classes, and both groups had the about the same number of sexual partners and the same age of their first sexual encounter (Malone). This study proves that the type of sexual education many students are currently receiving is having the same kind of outcome as if our students were receiving no sexual education whatsoever. Both groups in this study had alarming rates of unprotected sexual intercourse which can lead to all of the things we are trying to avoid by giving our children sexual education courses. The other study produced more unsurprising data this time involving students receiving comprehensive courses. The 40 percent of the students who received comprehensive sexual education had their first sexual encounters significantly later than their peers in the abstinence-only courses. Also the students in comprehensive cases had a
While initially this claim makes sense, once you do even a little bit of research you find this not to be true. In 2007, two different studies were published about the effects of abstinence-only programs versus comprehensive programs. The first study conducted by the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services found that abstinence-only courses did not promote abstinence at all. In fact, students that took these courses were compared to a control group who had no sexual education classes, and both groups had the about the same number of sexual partners and the same age of their first sexual encounter (Malone). This study proves that the type of sexual education many students are currently receiving is having the same kind of outcome as if our students were receiving no sexual education whatsoever. Both groups in this study had alarming rates of unprotected sexual intercourse which can lead to all of the things we are trying to avoid by giving our children sexual education courses. The other study produced more unsurprising data this time involving students receiving comprehensive courses. The 40 percent of the students who received comprehensive sexual education had their first sexual encounters significantly later than their peers in the abstinence-only courses. Also the students in comprehensive cases had a