In 1597, Sir Francis Bacon said, “Knowledge is power” and if that is true, then the more we know, the more choices a person can make on their own and the more individual power a person has. For children, trusted adults information is the “be all to end all” and usually the younger they are, the less questions are asked. This is helpful if the information being received is always correct, but in some cases it is not and that wrong information can spread like wildfire among young people. With sexual-education in public schools, students can be taught the correct material so that they can be educated and use their knowledge as power.
I went to school in Washington state, and when we got to a certain age we age-appropriate sexual education. A permission slip was signed by my mother, and at approximately 12 years old, boys and girls were separated with familiar teachers and classmates of the same gender and taught about how our bodies were changing. Females learned about menstrual cycles, pads and “why tampons really do fit” while the males learned about why they were getting hair in places they didn’t before, and why their bodies were changing in different ways as well. I was among classmates who were my friends and teachers who I trusted and we were allowed to ask questions like “Does it hurt?” and “Does my brother know about this?” Samples were given out for us to see, feel and understand and alleviated the possibility of the wrong information getting in to our sponges of brains elsewhere. My mom attempted to teach me about my menstrual cycle. She drew pictures of ovaries, fallopian tubes and a uterus. She was open about pads and tampons, and the changes my body was going to make, and I even felt that I could ask her questions but I knew a lot of kids in my class who didn’t have a Mom like mine or a Mom at all.
There are more than just the basics to have been