...Should Sex Education Be Taught In School? Kierra Cobb Dr. Gwendoline Ayuninjam EDU1301-02 November 24, 2014 Abstract Sex education is a big controversial issue today in society. The debate over sex education in the United States centers on the question of who should teach students about issues relating to sex such as intercourse, pregnancy, contraception, gender identity, sexual orientation, sexually transmitted diseases, and relationships. Should sex education be left up to parents, or do schools have a responsibility to inform students about these issues? There are many people who support the idea of sex education being taught in school, and there are others who do not agree. According to the Center for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) survey, more than 47 percent of all high school students say they have had sex; and 15 percent of high school students have had sex with four or more partners during their lifetime. It also states that among students’ who had sex in the three months prior to the survey, sixty-percent reported condom use and twenty-three percent reported birth control pills usage during their last sexual encounter (NCSL,2013). Sex Education provides positive feedback about sexuality and sexual expressions, including benefits of abstinence, the sexual reproductive system, and also relationships. There are several pros and cons towards teaching sex education in all school systems. Sex education is not predominantly about sex. Other issues originate...
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...A controversial topic in society is whether sex education should be allowed to be taught in our public-school system. What is sex education you ask? Well sex education is education about sexuality, contraceptive methods, how to prevent sexually transmitted diseases, the values of protection and attitudes and principles about sex. Almost every day you hear about how the numbers of teens and preteens are having sex and the rates of teenage pregnancy is high. Can this somehow be prevented by placing sex education in our the school curriculum? There are two kinds of sex education, one being abstinence-only programs and the second one being comprehensive education. Both of these programs teach about the process of sex education which can lead to children understanding about how to make the right choices for...
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...Sex education in public schools has been a controversial issue in the United States for over a decade. Sex education needs to keep up with the sexuality of today’s young adolescents. Young adolescents are becoming more sexually active at a younger age; by the time they reach high school most have already acquired some knowledge about sex but little about sexual responsibility. With the number of young adolescents with sexually transmitted diseases and teenage pregnancies rising— sex awareness is definitely needed. The question remains whether sex education should come from their parent or from a qualified professional at school. In order to educate young adolescents about the consequences and responsibilities of engaging in sexual activities it is my belief that sex education classes should be taught in public middle school. Most goals of sex education classes are the promotion of adult sexual health. Four main goals, according to National Guidelines Task Force, are to provide accurate information about human sexuality, to provide an opportunity for young adolescents to develop and understand their values, attitudes, and beliefs about sexuality, to help young people develop interpersonal skills and to help young adolescents apply responsibility of sexual relationships. Such responsibilities include how to defend a teenager against the pressures of prematurely becoming involved in sexual intercourse, encouraging the use of contraceptives, and other sexual health measures. The...
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...Sex Education in public school systems has always been an extremely delicate issue. The topic as to whom should teach children about sex has always been a debatable issue between parental responsibility or school system curriculum. Most parents feel that it is their responsibility to educate their own children about sex education in the comfort of their own home, providing their children with the information they (the parents) are able to demonstrate to their children. Schools are children constant source of learning. In having school systems incorporate Sex Education into the curriculum, it would make it mandatory for children to learn about the details, and the consequences of reproduction in a more elaborate setting. This would allowing students to be taught the same knowledge with the most up to date information provided by a licensed school professional in subjects: contraceptives, teen pregnancies, and STD’s. Individuals could argue that distributing condoms in schools would promote unjustified premarital sexual activity amongst school-aged teenagers. Those same individuals believe that parents should take apart of their own child’s development in sexual knowledge. Properly equipping them (their child) with prescribed contraceptives from doctors, or condoms disbursed directly from them (the parent). It is not uncommon for parents to give their children condoms; however, it can provide moments of awkwardness between the parent and the teenager. Having the educational...
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...Sex Education in Schools Should sex education be taught in schools? There had been many debates over this. They say that sex education only destroys the morality of people because they think that sex education teaches students about how sexual intercourse is done. Although sex education lowers the morality of people by teaching students how to use condoms and contraceptives, it should be taught in primary school and secondary school because (a) it prevents sexual diseases and teenage pregnancy, (b) it is indeed a need in case of parents’ absence, and (c) it gives children the idea of what is right and what is wrong. Others say that having sex education only encourages the students to engage in sexual intercourse and that it leads to sexual diseases and teenage pregnancy. The truth is that sex education does not encourage students to do it. According to Bleakley(2006), in a survey conducted, only about seventeen percent of the respondents answered that sex education does encourage them to do “it” and that the remaining eighty three percent strongly disagreed. Sex education prevents sexual diseases and teenage pregnancy. But how? Students are taught how to use condoms. According to Masland(n.d.), kids are becoming more sexually active at an earlier age. Sixty-six percent of high school students in America have done it by their senior year. These kids are in danger of sexually transmitted diseases. There is also a big possibility for them to become pregnant...
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...16 Sex Education in Schools Should sex education be taught in school? There had been many debates over this. They say that sex education only destroys the mortality of people because they think that sex education teaches students how sexual intercourse is done. Although sex education lowers the mortality of people by teaching them how to use condoms and contraceptives { birth control } it should be taught in intermediate { 7-9 } secondary { 10-12 } because (a) it prevents sexual diseases and teenage pregnancy (b) it is indeed a need in case of parents’ absence (c) it gives children an idea of what’s right or wrong. Others say that having sex education only encourages the students to engage in sexual intercourse and that it leads to sexual diseases and teenage pregnancy. The truth is that sex education does not encourage you to do it. According to bleakly (2006) “In a survey conducted, only about seventeen percent of the respondents answered that sex education encourages them to do “it”, and that the remaining eighty-three percent disagreed.” Sex education prevents sexual diseases and teenage pregnancy. But how? Students are taught how to use condoms. According to Masland (n.d), “Kids are becoming more sexually active at an earlier age.Sixty-six percent of high-school students have done it by their senior year”. These kids are in danger of sexually transmitted diseases {STD}.There is also a big possibility for them to get pregnant, and this is why sex education should be taught...
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...have talked to their children about sexual education, leaving eighteen percent to figure it out on their own. Everyone has their own opinion on if sexual education should be taught in public schools and one may find it crazy that kids don't get a good education on sexual activity, and others find it crazy that kids learn that. If every state required a good sexual education no one could do anything about it and everyone would get the same education. Believe it or not there's much rivalry whether or not sexual education should taught since the 1960's. There has been much controversy about this for a long time, and groups against it affected a lot. How else would the children who's parents don't talk to them find out. In the 1970's 20 states voted to restrict or abolish sexual education being taught in schools. By the end of the decade only three states had required sexual education. (Kentucky, Maryland, and New Jersey) Classes for sexual education would teach a wide range of topics. Such...
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...Sex Education in Schools Anquavese Jones ENG/102 06/26/2011 Becky Wilfahrt Abstract Teenage sex education is a topic of much debate in America’s schools because sex and its health related issues are prevalent in the lives of so many adolescents. Teenagers’ engagement in sexual activities has led to an increase in sexually transmitted diseases, emotional and psychological injuries, and out-of-wedlock childbearing (Rector, 2002, para. 1). Therefore, schools across the nation have been charged with implementing programs that will educate the young about the risks of engaging in sexual activities before marriage. America’s schools use one of the two commonly known approaches in hopes to deter premarital sex. These approaches are abstinence education and comprehensive sex education. Abstinence education is a type of sex education that places strict emphasis on abstaining from sex until marriage. Comprehensive sex education examines abstinence along with sexual reproductive health education and contraceptives. This paper will examine both approaches and show that comprehensive sex education is the most effective method. Introduction Sex is a hot topic that reaches many children through the different mediums to include school, internet, radio, and television. An effective way to arm our children with important data concerning sex education is by providing abstinence education in our schools. According to Powezek, in the United States, maturation classes are usually implemented...
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...Who is Responsible for Sex Education? Writing 291 Joseph A. Marco 22 July 2010 Public schools systems have been implementing sexual education into their classrooms as a regular part of instruction for decades. Ongoing controversies exist when dealing with this issue whether sex education being taught in the public schools or whether it should be considered the responsibility of the parents. It seems most parents are either for or against it and very rarely are they standing on middle ground. Given the statistics does it matter who teaches the children of the United States the basics of sex education? Children should receive a basic unbiased and informative sex education in school, from their it should be the parents responsibility. By their 18th birthday, six in 10 teenage women and more than 5 in 10 teenage men have had sexual intercourse. Of the approximately 750,000 teen pregnancies that occur each year, 82 percent are unintended with more than one quarter ending abortion. The United States continues to have one of the highest teen pregnancy rates in the developed world – almost twice as high as England, Canada, and Wales and eight times as high as the Netherlands and Japan. In addition to the teen pregnancy rate, the teens in the United States contract roughly nine million new sexually transmitted infections (STI’s) each year. Though teens in the United States have levels of sexual activity similar to levels among their Canadian, English, French, and Swedish...
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...Research Paper November 13, 2011 Pros and Cons of Sex Education in Schools Sex education in public school has been a controversial issue in the United States for quite a while now. I feel like it really needs to be into schools with so many teen pregnancies, HIV and STD’s cases sex education is needed. Most of the American public believes that sex education should be taught at home by the children’s parents. They feel this way because the sex education programs in schools do not emphasize on abstinence instead they encourage the children to have sex instead. American culture is very sexually oriented. When you turn on your TV or listen to music sex is all you can hear. The pros of sex education in school are countless. Sex education in school gives the kids opportunities to express themselves with their sexuality. It also prevents them from becoming parents at an early age. Each year, U.S. teens experience as many as 850,000 pregnancies, and youth under age 25 experience about 9.1 million sexually transmitted infections (STIs). By age 18, 70 percent of U.S. females and 62 percent of U.S. males have initiated vaginal sex. When expressing comprehensive sex education is effective at assisting young people to make healthy decisions about sex and to obtain healthy sexual behaviors. No abstinence-only-until-marriage program has been shown to help teens delay the initiation of sex or to protect themselves when they do initiate sex. The U.S. government has spent over one billion...
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...Programs 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. Schools receiving...
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...teens have engaged in oral sex…and more than 45 percent have had intercourse at least once.” Today’s future generation has been involved in sexual activities more than ever. The question is, do they know what they are getting themselves into? With the deliberation on what should be taught in a sex education class, many wonder if the abstinence-only programs are working to lower the number of teens that participate in these activities? Paul Weyrich’s article “Abstinence Education Works” and Arthur Caplan’s article “Abstinence-Only Sex Ed Defies Common Sense: Education Policy Spreads Ignorance, Sends Confusing Messages to Teens” both have different viewpoints on abstinence-only sex education. Weyrich claims that having abstinence-only education programs can prevent teen pregnancies and transmissions of sexually transmitted diseases. Research from Texas A&M, show that sex education classes that teach abstinence have significantly lowered sexual activity rates among teens. Studies show that abstinence programs are very beneficial and many ways towards teenagers. The programs teach teens to be safe, prepared, and mature about sex; as well prepare them for when they get married and have sex in the future. Weyrich finishes off strong by restating his main point: the best prevention against STDs and unplanned pregnancies is not having sex before marriage. According to Caplan, STD’s are rapidly spreading among young people, and abstinence-only sex education classes are not needed because...
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...In "Educating Teenagers about sex in the United States. The magority of sex education takes place in 6th-8th grade where they learn how to say no to sex, methods of birth control, STDs and how to prevent HIV/AIDs. Sex education helps reduce teen pregnancy and STDs but goes againts what some parents want to be taught. “Each year, U.S. teens experience as many as 850,000 pregnancies, and youth under age 25 experience about 9.1 million sexually transmitted infections (STIs)” (McKeon). As these numbers stick out to any ordinary person, schools still have not taken the initiative to teach sex education. Sex education can be explained in two different ways comprehensive or abstinence only. The difference of the two is that comprehensive sex...
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...Introduction: Sexual education teaches people that sexuality is a natural, normal, healthy part of life and sexual education is needed in high schools to teach young adults not only the dangers of sex such as unwanted pregnancies or STDs, as well as the many other aspects to sex that aren’t spoken about such as identifying ones sexual preference (gay, straight etc.), relationships, protection, the emotional aspect of it, the maturity required and how sex actually works and not just the sexual organs which is what is usually taught to young adults who are going through adolescence which is a very challenging time for many. Sexual education should clarify the issues involved with the topic and not confuse people. Sexual education is needed everywhere...
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...1101 April 25, 2013 Sex Education in Schools Sex education is a broad term used to describe education about human sexual activity, sexual reproduction, sexual intercourse, and other aspects of human sexual behavior. Although some form of sex education is part of the curriculum at many schools, it remains a controversial issue in several states. Ignorance regarding sexual matters has resulted in 65 percent of all teens having sex before their senior year and 9.1 million of the 19 million Americans who get an STD in a year are teenagers or between the ages of 15 and 24 (“Teen Sex Statistics”). There is no better place than in a biology class or a special sex education class to inform children of the importance of having planned families; consequently, these classes can reduce teenage pregnancies and much physical suffering caused by AIDS or other serious sexually transmitted diseases. It should never be left to parents because, in many cases, they cannot properly inform their children on the subject of sex education. Sex education must be taught in schools because it will help to prevent STDs from being transmitted, especially among teens, it will help prevent teenage pregnancy, and will help prevent pre-mature sex, which can damage the body from an early stage in life. Sex education does not only talk about sex. It also teaches about reproduction and sexual health. A lot of parents do not support the fact that sex education should be taught in schools, but yet they don’t take...
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