You’re Kid is Practicing Unsafe Sex

Whether or not Sex Education (Sex Ed) should be taught in public schools has been a long-standing debate since 1996 in which parents have always had the final say. Parents deem the topic as inappropriate for their children, while schools know they need to teach students about this topic. Although there has been a steady decrease, in teen pregnancies some teens and millennials blame a rise in sexually transmitted diseases teens and young adults on the lack of adequate Sex Education. Before school administrators can decide whether or not to teach Sex Ed in the classroom, parents need to stop babying their kids; the realities students face need to be taken into account, as well as boundaries, need to be set for the extent of the lessons.

To start off, Sex Ed in public institutions originated when President Bill Clinton passed the Welfare Reform Act in 1996. During the time prior there was an influx of STDs and STIs being spread by soldiers that had recently come home from having gone overseas. The government passed the Chamberlain-Kahn Act to teach soldiers about sexual hygiene, syphilis, and gonorrhea. During that time “Americans began to view sex ed as a public-health” and the fact that the government was only focused on the soldiers raised concerns(Cornblatt). These soldiers were bringing it back to local women such as prostitutes that could have spread it around and possibly even their wives. In the hopes of stopping the spread of STIs the government passed the Welfare Reform Act which allocated $250 million dollars for schools to teach abstinence only. Teaching abstinence as Danielle Bainbridge, the host of the PBS Series the Origin of Everything calls it “an unexpected bipartisan unfier”. Since there are conservative ends to the spectrum of each party it is understandable that they would agree on this. However when Democrat Surgeon General Jocelyn Elders promoted masturbation for teens, she came under fire and in the end was forced to resign. Many people at the time came out with statements that masturbation was “self pollution” that would ultimately result in blindness, insanity and death; and that sexuality should only be taught in religious institutions and at home.

Since parents think that schools know best and will teach abstinence, parents seem to go with the flow of everything the school board and administrators decide should be taught at school until it comes to topics that seem controversial in the slightest. At the sight of controversy parents get defensive and discussions on what is and is not school appropriate are raised. Discussions on what is appropriate for teens often deem topics with sexual connotations and politics as inappropriate. Parents need to be more accepting that times are different. According to Alexandra Sifferlin from TIME magazine, most teens are exposed to an average of 15,000 sex references on TV each year. Parents need to stop trying to protect their children from the inevitable. One example of this are the parents of high school freshmen in Fremont Unified School District in California that were outraged by the McGraw-Hill textbook Your Health Today because according to Micheal Walsh with the New York Daily News, it was “too racy for high school freshmen” because they want to protect their children's innocence (Borba & Walsh). Protecting the innocence of a teen makes no sense, because not only have they most likely been exposed to much worse, but it also shows that the parents do not understand their children very well.

Next, In order to understand teens, those whom the lessons are directed towards, we need to realize with the Age of the Internet has come the Age of No Barriers. Just as an adult can access whatever they want through the internet, so can kids and teens. With 93% of boys and 62% of girls under the age of 18 admitting to having been exposed to porn, teens probably might know more about sex and sexual subcultures than their parents think they do and probably more than their parents do (Gilkerson). All because porn is more accessible to them than it ever was to their parents. Just because everything is online does not mean it is necessarily right. Adult films are not the most moral videos to watch. They are made to satisfy fantasies and not be reenacted in real life. Since teens are not learning about the natural things their bodies yearn to engage in they are instead using these fantasy-based videos as Sex Ed videos even though that is not its intended use.

Lastly, the topics discussed in class should be appropriate for the young adults that high school students are. Teens should be taught about the general ideas of sexuality, the importance of safe sex, body image, types of contraceptives, types of menstrual products and the effects of hormones on the bodies of both sexes, because those topics are relevant. However, the class should not discuss topics such as S & M, bondage and other subcultures, because it's inappropriate. They students need to know that what they are feeling, doing and experiencing is normal, including masturbation. Masturbation should also be talked about since 80% of boys and 48% of girls recently surveyed by Dr. Joel Forman with Verywell Family admitted to it (Poncelet). Students shoud be taught that excesive masturbation and watching too much porn as well as not praticing safe sex is detrimental to their overall health. The goal of a Sex Ed class should be to prepare teens for their adult relationships they will be engaging in once they get out of high school. Teachers should not be shaming or encouraging sexual behavior but they should normalize talking about things that most teens do.

In the end, by limiting what students can and cannot be taught in a Sex Ed class to make it PG is impossible, and simply telling them to abstain makes them turn to other ways of getting the same information. Parents need to realize that teens nowadays lose their innocence quicker than previous generations because of the internet. Giving teens good Sex Ed so that they can make wiser decisions in the future. By saying that good in depth Sex Ed “treats the kids as adults and the content is adult” is absurd because they are no longer kids; they are young adults (Walsh). There is no way to talk about adult things with children which is why teens need to be treated as the young adults they are. It is vital for the youth of today to be taught the right way instead of being let in the dark once and for all.

Works Cited

“About Teen Pregnancy.” Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, Centers for Disease

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Bainbridge, Danielle. “Why Do Schools Teach Sex Education?” YouTube, PBS, 26 Mar. 2019,

www.youtube.com/watch?v=gTmGzaUPmxQ.

Blackburn, Steven, and Steven Blackburn. “Sex Education in Schools Sparks New Sex Ed Policy

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Borba, Andria. “After Complaints From Parents, Fremont Schools Reject Controversial Sex-Ed

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www.newsweek.com/brief-history-sex-ed-america-81001.

Masland, Molly. “Carnal Knowledge: The Sex Ed Debate.” NBCNews.com, NBCUniversal

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Office of Adolescent Health. “Adolescent Development and STDs.” HHS.gov, US Department

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