Human Sexuality Assignment 3 Sarah Rollins
Sexual education has been a controversial topic since some believe that it is harmful for students while others disagree (Carroll, 2009). Growing up in Northern Virginia, the Manassas City school system started sexual education in the fourth grade, which in their regards, was at the elementary level. Back then, parents were permitted to excuse their children from these classes if they opposed letting their children learn about sexuality at such a young age. At this point in our lives, my mother did not agree with starting sexual education this young and had excused me and my siblings from these classes. As we progressed through the grades, the next sexual education classes were offered in fifth, …show more content…
As a student that attended a high school that had the highest pregnancy statistics around, I believe that they should have realized that propagandizing abstinence was not working and instead promote sexual education in a different way. Just to provide an idea of how high the pregnancy outcomes were, in my grade alone there were six pregnancies by our junior year. I had no idea what possible contraception methods were most affective, where to get them, or how they worked. Knowing how to be safe during sex was out of the question and preventing sexual diseases or STD information was never offered. Because they did not offer this information, I believe that that is why so many students ended up with teenage pregnancies since they were never told where to get condoms or how to talk about sexual activity with their parents or an adult. I think that this greatly hindered my education on sex since I had many questions that I reverted to the internet or peers to answer since I did not feel as though I could confide in my health teachers or parents. Thankfully I received the correct information in the end but some people are not quite so lucky and receive information that can cause them to get pregnant or contract an …show more content…
Instead of basing sexual education on pure abstinence, I think that an effective sexual curriculum would include providing knowledge on sexual diseases, pregnancy, and contraception. Along with offering this information, I think that students should be made aware of how to acquire the proper protection and contraception along with how to use it appropriately. The first thing that I would do would be to make any sexual education classes in public schools mandatory once students reached middle school (7th and 8th grade). This would reinstate facts about the student’s sexual genitalia to students and would make sure that everyone has the same background information regarding sexuality. I would say that sexual education classes would begin to be offered in 5th and 6th grade, but at this point, would not be mandatory and would be up to parental discretion. This is because looking at Figure 8.4 in the Sexuality Now textbook, the first most visible age of adolescents that first had sexual intercourse was around 12 to 13 years of age (Carroll, 2009). This means that even before they reached this age, some of these students were most likely already sexually active or were not provided proper information on sex. This information was provided in Figure 8.3 where the percentage of adolescents that took
Sexual education has been a controversial topic since some believe that it is harmful for students while others disagree (Carroll, 2009). Growing up in Northern Virginia, the Manassas City school system started sexual education in the fourth grade, which in their regards, was at the elementary level. Back then, parents were permitted to excuse their children from these classes if they opposed letting their children learn about sexuality at such a young age. At this point in our lives, my mother did not agree with starting sexual education this young and had excused me and my siblings from these classes. As we progressed through the grades, the next sexual education classes were offered in fifth, …show more content…
As a student that attended a high school that had the highest pregnancy statistics around, I believe that they should have realized that propagandizing abstinence was not working and instead promote sexual education in a different way. Just to provide an idea of how high the pregnancy outcomes were, in my grade alone there were six pregnancies by our junior year. I had no idea what possible contraception methods were most affective, where to get them, or how they worked. Knowing how to be safe during sex was out of the question and preventing sexual diseases or STD information was never offered. Because they did not offer this information, I believe that that is why so many students ended up with teenage pregnancies since they were never told where to get condoms or how to talk about sexual activity with their parents or an adult. I think that this greatly hindered my education on sex since I had many questions that I reverted to the internet or peers to answer since I did not feel as though I could confide in my health teachers or parents. Thankfully I received the correct information in the end but some people are not quite so lucky and receive information that can cause them to get pregnant or contract an …show more content…
Instead of basing sexual education on pure abstinence, I think that an effective sexual curriculum would include providing knowledge on sexual diseases, pregnancy, and contraception. Along with offering this information, I think that students should be made aware of how to acquire the proper protection and contraception along with how to use it appropriately. The first thing that I would do would be to make any sexual education classes in public schools mandatory once students reached middle school (7th and 8th grade). This would reinstate facts about the student’s sexual genitalia to students and would make sure that everyone has the same background information regarding sexuality. I would say that sexual education classes would begin to be offered in 5th and 6th grade, but at this point, would not be mandatory and would be up to parental discretion. This is because looking at Figure 8.4 in the Sexuality Now textbook, the first most visible age of adolescents that first had sexual intercourse was around 12 to 13 years of age (Carroll, 2009). This means that even before they reached this age, some of these students were most likely already sexually active or were not provided proper information on sex. This information was provided in Figure 8.3 where the percentage of adolescents that took