Sex Education Is Important For Public Schools Essay

Sex education is important, but many students finish sex education classes with a distorted view of sexuality and without a good understanding of contraception and safe-sex practices. Instead, children only learn that they should not have sex until they are married. Abstinence-only programs in public schools have become popular because of a law giving millions of dollars to schools that teach the programs. These programs have the good intention of persuading young people to wait until marriage before having sex, but abstinence-only programs are not achieving this goal and are flawed by the distorted and biased perspective that they promote.

In 1996, the United States government passed a law giving funding to states that offered abstinence-only programs in public schools. Since this time, over half of a billion dollars has been given to states to promote abstinence-only programs (Brody). To receive the money, schools must agree to follow a set of rules. The rules indicate that a school’s abstinence-only program must have "as its exclusive purpose teaching the social, psychological, and health gains to be realized by abstaining from sexual activity" ("Impacts"). Students must be taught that they are likely to suffer harmful effects if they have sex before marriage. They also must be taught that the "expected standard" is for school-age children not to engage in sexual activity and for adults to engage in sexual relations only within marriage ("Impacts"). Schools…