Sex Education has been around for a while. It is not a separate class in middle school or high school. Most schools have it during P.E./health class. Sex education is mainly to inform kids about the risks and effects of sex. Personally, I am glad that my school offered sex ed. It helped me see things that I didn't like to talk to my mother about. Sex Education helps middle school and high school kids learn about sex, preventions of STDs and pregnancies, and protection from peer pressure.
What is sex education you might ask? Well, sex ed. is sometimes called sexuality education or sex and relationships education, is basically informing kids information, forming attitudes and beliefs about sex, sexual identity, relationships and intimacy (avert.org 1). According to siecus.org, "Sexuality education is the lifelong process of acquiring information and forming attitudes, beliefs, and values" (siecus.org 1). At a young age, it can help them prevent situations that might have happened without properly being informed. The class can help make kids confident about their personal decisions and beliefs. It makes them feel they can say "yes" or "no" without feeling bad about it. And if they say "yes", they know the consequences and will know how to protect themselves better than if they didn't have the class.
The aims of sex ed. hopes to "both reduce the risks of potentially negative outcomes from sexual behavior like unwanted or unplanned pregnancies and infection with STDs, and to enhance the quality of relationships" (avert.org 1). It helps develop young peoples' ability to make decisions for the rest of their life. A lot of parents don't talk about sex to their children and this class is a way for those kids to understand and learn what sex is and what it's about.
The skills that sex ed should develop include communication, listening, negotiating, and being able to ask for and identify sources of help and advice (avert.org 1). All these skills can also be used in every day life. Asking for help for anything can be hard, especially rape, pregnancies, and STDs. If kids know what STDs are and what they look like, they could get help faster than if they didn't. Within a class, the teacher usually goes over the different kinds of STDs, what they look like, the symptoms, how to prevent them and how to get help if a person has one. Also the class helps develop other important skills such as "recognizing pressures from other people and how to resist them, deal with and challenge prejudice, and seek help from adults-parents and professional-through the family, community, and health and welfare services" (avert.org 2).
There is a lot of inaccurate information out in the world and this class can help differentiate between the two. The kids can also discuss a range of moral and social issues and perspectives on sex and sexuality without being scared or worried about what people would say. The topics they could talk about include different cultural attitudes and sensitive issues like sexuality, abortion and contraception (avert.org 2).
People know that kids are influenced from a lot of things, other people, TV, movies, life in general, and sex ed classes help influence them in a good way. There are different elements to this sort of thing. "Some health messages emphasize the risks and dangers associated with sexual activity and almost all media coverage promotes the idea that being sexually active makes a person more attractive and mature" (avert.org 2). Since this class has arisen, we can give out the right message and the right attitude towards sex so the kids can make the right decision instead of getting a STD or pregnant. The class helps build a moral framework for kids that don't already have one under the right influence.
This class helps the kids talk about the issues where people have very strong views such as abortion, sex before marriage, lesbians and gays, contraception and birth control. Also, they can explore and understand different cultures, religions and moral views that they might not know about (avert.org 2). "Effective sex education also provides young people with an opportunity to explore the reasons why people have sex, to think about how it involves emotions, respect for one's self and to explore gender differences and how ethnicity and sexuality can influence people's feelings and options" (avert.org 2). It is important for kids to be able to understand how bullying, stereotyping, abuse and exploitation can negatively influence relationships (avert.org 2).
The information that kids get should be accurate and thorough. As said before, kids get their information mainly from each other, media, TV, magazines, leaflets, books, and web-sites. Some of this is accurate but kids assume a lot of things from these sources. "Providing information through sex education is therefore about finding out what young people already know and adding to their existing knowledge and correcting any misinformation they may have. For example, young people may have heard that condoms are not effective against HIV/AIDS or that there is a cure for AIDS" (arvet.org 2). The class helps right the wrongs of what the inaccurate information provided.
The goals of a school-based sexuality education include: "provide accurate information about human sexuality, an opportunity for young people to develop and understand their values, attitudes and beliefs about sexuality, help young people develop relationships and interpersonal skills, and to help young people exercise responsibility, abstinence, pressures to become prematurely involved in sexual intercourse, and the use of contraception and other sexual health measures" (siecus.org 3). It is designed to give a positive view of sexuality, the skills to provide a healthy sex life, and make good decisions now and in the future.
There are some guidelines put out by the National Guidelines Task Force that identify six key concept areas that should be part of any comprehensive sexuality education program. The six key concepts are human development, relationships, personal skills, sexual behavior, sexual health, and society and culture studies (siecus.org 4). These topics help kids with the main topic of sex.
Students are learning a lot of different things in today's sex ed classes, even though the content of sex ed classes vary depending on the community and the age of students in the program. After a survey released by the "Kaiser Family Foundation, 61% of teachers and 58% of principals reported that their school takes a comprehensive approach to sexuality education described as teaching young people that they should wait to engage in sexual behavior but that they should practice "safer sex" and use birth control if they do not" (siecus.org 4). But in contrast to those statistics, "33% of teachers and 34% of principals described their school's main message as abstinence-only-until-marriage" (4). Within the same survey, The Kaiser Family Foundation asked about what topics they teach in the class such as, "HIV/AIDS (98%), abstinence (97%), STDs (96%), and the basics of reproduction (88%), birth control (74%), abortion (46%), and sexual orientation and homosexuality (44%)" (4). "The bad news is that each year almost 900,000 American teenagers get pregnant and give birth to some 500,000 children, by far the highest teenage birthrate among the world's developed countries" (Cooper 144).
Some common characteristics of effective programs include a "list made by Doug Kirby, PhD, and author of Emerging Answers and No Easy Answers"(4). The list includes:
There is a curriculum called "The Loving Well Curriculum". This curriculum was "developed at Boston University that uses selections from the classics, folk-tales, and the best of contemporary adolescent literature to examine relationships from family love to infatuation and early romances to commitment and marriage" (medinstitute.org 1). "A program evaluation finds that of those students who were not sexually active when the started the Loving Well Curriculum, 92% are sill abstinent two years later, compared to 72% abstinent in a control group not exposed to this curriculum" (1). This curriculum sounds like a good way to go if schools can catch those that have not had sex.
Another sex curriculum is called "Sex Respect". "This curriculum was developed under a grants from the Office of Adolescent Pregnancy Programs" (1). It offers curricula for the middle and high school age kids. "It teaches chastity as true sexual freedom - the freedom to grow up without the pressures of sex. It also promotes parent involvement through a guidebook with family assignments for enhancing parent-teen communication about sex and the value of chastity" (1). The evaluation of the program resulted in a 5% rate of females getting pregnant compared to the 49% females outside of the program.
Parents play a big role in sex ed. If they start teaching their children about sex and the effects of sex, then they would not be surprised in class. They would already know a little bit about everything and the teacher would have a better and more efficient time teaching the class. Many children become confused and could be pressured into sexual intercourse before they are ready. "Too often sexual abuse, sexually transmitted infections and unwanted pregnancy shape their lives" (plannedparenthooddotcom 1). Parents should be able to talk to their kids from day one about sex. If they can't they should find information to help talk to the kids.
Sex education is a great class that should be used in every school system. No matter how it is taught as long as the class is working, it should be taught. Sex education in middle and high school levels helps prevent pregnancies, STDs and many other things, but it also informs the kids of the right kind of material. The teachers can right the wrongs of the inaccurate information, myths and rumors. A lot of kids leave the class with a better sense of right and wrong about sex. Sex Education is a great class that should only get better with time and practice.