What's Happening?

By Juliana Hubbard

When I was a freshman in high school in 2015, we had mandatory sex education class every day for 3 weeks. It was the worst part of the school day, not because I didn’t want to learn but because it was obvious that our teacher did not want to teach us about sex. He was much more comfortable lecturing us about drug use and addiction than he was talking to us about our own bodies. When he did talk about sex, he focused mainly on abstinence and its benefits, only mentioning contraceptives like condoms and birth control to explain how often they failed. The only thing he said about consent was that obtaining consent was a surefire way to avoid lawsuits, accusations, and unnecessary drama.

Obviously, he wasn’t in charge of the curriculum he taught us, because that is a decision the school board makes. But looking back at my own experiences in sex education I have to ask myself, what did I truly learn?

Absolutely nothing.

Well, at least nothing about my body, reproductive health, or sex. What I took away from that experience wasn’t the benefits of abstinence, but the disappointing fact that my sex education left me unprepared for anything I would face in the future.

Standard Sex Education in the United States

Abstinence-based sex education is the most prevalent form of sex education in the United States. It’s what I received, it’s what most of my friends received, and it’s what the majority of Americans receive during school. Despite its abundance throughout the education system, it is letting the country down in a big way.

According to recent statistics, one in four teens get a sexually transmitted infection (STI) every year and people age 15-24 account for 50% of all STIs even though they are only 25% of the sexually experienced population. When abstinence education is taught in schools, it usually succeeds in deterring students from using contraceptives rather than steering them away from sex entirely. In the United States, approximately 56% of boys and 50% of girls aged 15-19 years report being sexually active, and every year nearly one million teenage girls within the country become pregnant, with 80% of those pregnancies being unplanned or unintended. The incidence of sexual harassment and assault across the country is astronomically high, and most people can’t even label a diagram of their own reproductive anatomy.

For years, the philosophy of sex education was to teach adolescents abstinence so they would avoid any sexual activity until marriage. The curriculum relies on skewed statistics, misinformation, and fear tactics to scare students away from sex. However, it’s obvious today that the tactics don’t work (if they ever worked at all), as abstinence-based education doesn’t stop students from engaging in sexual activity. All it has accomplished is creating a sex-negative culture where sex is taboo and not talked about, denying adolescents and young adults safe spaces to understand and talk about sex, their own bodies, and relationships. This leads to sneaking around, making risky ill-informed decisions, and increased rates of STI transmissions and unplanned pregnancies.

I might not know what you’re thinking, but I know what went through my head when I found out about this. If abstinence-based sex education is so bad, why is it still in schools? And most importantly, how do we avoid all the things listed above?

Lucky for you, I found an answer.

The Better Alternative

An alternative to abstinence-based education is comprehensive sex education. Favored by organizations like the United Nations, comprehensive sex education is based on the motto “knowledge is power.” Beginning in middle school, and sometimes even elementary school, comprehensive sex education strives to provide age-appropriate information about anatomy, relationships, consent, identity, and sex. The goal of the comprehensive curriculum is to provide children and young people with the knowledge and skills to make responsible and informed choices about themselves as well as their social and sexual relationships.

The curriculum in comprehensive sex education is based on providing scientifically accurate information about human anatomy, anatomical development, reproductive health, contraceptives, childbirth, and STIs. Beyond discussing sex, comprehensive sex education also ensures students have a understanding about family life, relationships, and culture, as well as issues such as discrimination, gender stereotypes, and sexual abuse. Overall, it strives to help students develop life skills, knowledge, and values that they will use to create better communication, better understanding of healthy relationships, and responsible decision-making as they grow older.

The Rationale

Why is it so important to teach students about all of that stuff? Won’t that just give students more tools to have sex than before? Well, let’s think of life like a test. If you show up to the test unprepared and guess willy-nilly, you’re more likely to make simple mistakes, choose the wrong answers, and potentially embarrass yourself. What happens if you study and know what’s going to be on the test? You’ll be more knowledgeable about the things coming your way and prevent yourself from falling for easily avoidable mistakes and traps.

Don’t believe me? Let’s go back to my freshman year sex education class. On one of the rare days we learned about contraceptives, a student asked our teacher to demonstrate how to put on a condom. Out came an electric green dildo and our teacher, with a bright-red face, proceeded to put the condom on wrong.

Not only did he not pinch the tip to leave room to catch the semen, he forced the condom on a bit too hard and ripped it. One of the students in class attempted to correct our teacher, and in embarrassment, our teacher hastily shouted “that’s why you shouldn’t have sex” and that was the end of our unit on contraceptives. And while this might be completely unrelated, I know there were seven pregnancy scares and two pregnancies from my freshman class that same year.

I’m not here to argue that abstinence isn’t a good option or shouldn’t be an option at all, I just want people to be educated about all of their options so they can decide for themselves which is best. If knowledge is power, sticking to abstinence-based sex education is the same as robbing students of their powers to make well-informed decisions.

Addressing Your Concerns

This probably isn’t the first time you’ve heard about comprehensive sex education, but it might be the first time you’ve heard a student ask for better sex education. Awkward? Absolutely, but inexcusably necessary to teach students this pertinent information. There are lots of arguments against comprehensive sex education swirling around, some of which you might have heard. Allow me to debunk some of the common misconceptions about comprehensive sex education.

In depth sex education leads to earlier sexual activity. On the contrary, research from the United Nations indicates comprehensive sex education leads to a later start in sexual behavior that is much more responsible than abstinence-based education.

Sex education deprives children of their innocence. The curriculum of comprehensive sex education features age-appropriate and scientifically accurate information concerning themselves and their lives, not meant to deprive them of any innocence. Completely avoiding the topics laid out in curricula directly contributes to conflicting and damaging conclusions being drawn from the media, the internet, or their peers about students’ bodies, relationships, and sex.

Teachers may be willing to teach sex education but are uncomfortable, lacking in skill, or afraid to do so. There are many seminars, workshops, and programs available to prepare teachers for teaching a comprehensive sex education curriculum. If schools don’t choose to implement a comprehensive sex education curriculum or teachers refuse to teach it, parents still have access to these resources and can teach their own children the material. It matters more that students get the information than how.

Teach Sex to Stop Sex