Listen up, teachers of every level! I found this article at the Boston.com news site, and after reading it I think it’s about time to write about sex on this blog. The article describes the actions of Rhode Island education officials who have banned a certain abstinence-only program from being used in public schools because it includes stereotypes of both genders and requires a health test be taken that violated student privacy. After reading about the content of the program, which included descriptions of women as “caring” and men as “strong” and “courageous,” I silently applauded the people who noticed that something was wrong with the situation, then immediately fell to thinking about how sex education works in this country. Each year, more and more funding is allotted by the federal government for abstinence-only programs to be used in public schools. Besides the obvious problems with programs such as those mentioned in the article, I think the abstinence-only approach has two major flaws. First, it ignores the fact that by the time the information reaches students, a large percentage of them are already sexually active. Talking to students about not having sex when they are already sexually active is not going to do much to teach them about their health and safety. These people need to know how to communicate with their partner(s), use contraceptives and condoms, and feel comfortable with themselves, not be told that what they’re doing is wrong.
The second big problem that I have with the abstinence-only approach is that it often times uses scare tactics to convince students that sex will only give them trouble. In school, I was told stories about people with AIDS, girls who should have gone to college but then got pregnant, and I was actually shown pictures of people’s genitals with sexually transmitted infections, which was enough to make some students ill. What was the message we got? Oh yeah, if you have sex before you get married, this will happen to you! The emphasis was not on being responsible to avoid these situations, it was on gearing students towards thinking that there is nothing good about sex at all and they should just not do it, period. Not that these points shouldn’t be brought up- indeed, any comprehensive sex education program should talk about what you should be careful to avoid. However, there are also positives to having sex and it should not be portrayed as inherently bad, immoral, or undesirable. In fact, I was present for a speech given during the fall semester by a woman who did extensive research about sex education in some European countries, and I think we could learn a few lessons from their approach. Sex education starts early in middle school and consistently gives students accurate information about anatomy, the positives and negatives of sex, different kinds of sexual acts, communication about sex, contraceptives, emotions, and several other related topics. The result? Lower teen pregnancy rates and STI rates than in the Unites States. Much lower. So when I hear the old tired argument that talking to students about sex will make them start mating like crazy, all I have to do is think about what a difference accurate sex education has made for the lives of so many people.
I think we should face it- there is absolutely no way we are going to convince the 20,219,890 15-19 year old people in the United States (taken from the 2000 census) that they should not have sex. As teachers, this issue will directly affect us because we may be asked to teach or support our school’s sex education philosophy, and as teachers we also may have students who come to us with concerns about sex or pregnancy. Sex is a real issue for teens, and I think treating it like it doesn’t happen is no way to help those who have questions. There is always one argument, of course, that schools should not be involved in teaching children about sex at all because that kind of information should be given by the parent. My response to this would be, if it is really that much of an issue, parents could have the option to pull their students out of classrooms during sex education. The other argument I have (which I would not say in front of parents) is that the average person doesn’t know as much about issues surrounding sex as someone trained to provide information about sex, and teenaged students these days deserve all of the accurate information they can get. Of course, when parents talk to their children about sex it helps immensely, especially if the parents are open about the topic. All I want to point out is that they may not have answers to all of the questions their child has. Overall, I really think that we need to convey a message about responsible decision-making instead of telling teens what decision they should make.
