Sex Education: Hurting more than helping?
Opposing viewpoints on the effectivness of todays sex education programs in America
By April Moody
Reporter,
The VOICE
In Arizona we strive to set a standard for youth everywhere when it comes to sex education. We put up a fight to keep it, we make a fuss over it, we demand and demand it to be a specific way.
Some say we need to teach kids in school about abstinence, period. Many more believe that students should be taught how to have "safe sex", and be introduced to all the contraceptive techniques out there on the market. Safe sex, of course, wins.
Regardless, what it all comes down to, is that Arizona schools are not in fact teaching kids how to be safe, they are instead teaching kids how to have sex.
No longer is the paralyzing fear of getting pregnant forefront on a young girl's mind. She knows she won't, or at least truly believes it, when she engages in sexual behavior. A young man, too, finds that he can have sex without paying any consequences later.
We're teaching children that having sex young and unmarried is alright, because no one will know, and no one will care. Because let's face it, no one does. Even parents have jumped on the bandwagon, believing that a teenager's sexual urges can't be ignored; they allow the promiscuity to continue, as they turn a blind eye to the issue. Denial was never a solution.
Both parents and teachers have, in a way, given up on children. It's almost as if they don't believe it is their responsibility, and that it's out of their hands. The first mention of sex children taste is in the media: TV, music, advertisements. They don't really understand it, they just know that they want it and they can get it. Kids don't think about how that aspect of their lives, if engaged in without thought for responsibility, can dramatically destroy their lives.
By the time sex education rolls around in high school, students have been having sex for a long time. They are already stuck on it; we're just teaching them new ways to do it.
The fact that it's taught in schools is disturbing. Parents should be taking that responsibility. But let's face it; they don't want that responsibility anymore. And if they did, they would be wondering why their child has to sit in a classroom and get the talk from someone they don't know or confide in; in a classroom full of students who don't care, whose parents don't care, who have been doing it for years, and who already know all about it.
Sex education is a joke. Children as young as 5th grade have been getting it on with each other for awhile; we're just refusing to acknowledge it.
Wake up people; if you want to teach your child about sex, then you have to actually teach them. Let's all stop pretending we're making some sort of a difference. It's pretty obvious that we're not. Sex ed. is really nothing more than the government trying, once again, to raise our children for us, or at least pretend to. Why doesn't anyone seem to get that?
Please send comments to amoody@gccvoice.com
By Jenna Duffy
Editor-in-Chief,
The VOICE
Anyone who still believes in Abstinence-Only programs in high schools is living in a fantasy world. Abstinence isn't a bad theory, in fact it's the only watertight solution to preventing pregnancy and STI's, but they leave out one very important factor, it's completely natural for teens to be curious about their fascinating newly functioning body parts and for their hormones to rage to the breaking point. This normal pattern is nothing new! Teenagers have been having sex for a long time. Perhaps back in the day they would justify their lusty desires with marriage at age 14 but we don't really afford that to teenagers any more.
Abstinence should be and often is taught in conjunction with sexual education but abstinence by itself cannot stand alone because not all young adults feel they need to wait until they're 25 and married to partake in sexual activities, some are just ready before others.
With this reality in mind, having a solid sex education program in place at every school in America is paramount to the preservation of our society.
With even just one prevented unplanned teen pregnancy or one STI stopped from being transmitted from person to person due to use of safe sex practices, sex education has already won. Regardless of personal feelings towards birth control, is being educated about the different methods really detrimental to the teenage psyche? If a person is planning to choose not to partake in birth control, isn't it still a good idea to be educated about STI's?
Sex education is an easy scapegoat for the zealous abstinence only pushers. The jab is woefully misguided because all sex education is supposed to be is a reaction to the changes our society has gone through in the last 50 years.
The sexual revolution can be blamed for the increase in teen pregnancy, the provocative media figures can be blamed for turning our little angels into beasts and harlots. Parents not speaking to their kids about sex can too be blamed.
And how are kids supposed to sort fact from fiction if all they see in the media is fantasy? And what of those kids who don't have educated parents or parents that lie in order to scare their kids or parents who are just too shy to tell their kids about sex, are these teens really supposed to learn this on their own?
Did your parents give you every last lurid detail about chancres and pustules on your private places?
Did they go through the juicy niceties of wet dreams or perhaps clitoral stimulation?
I'll tell you who did teach me these things and that was my ninth grade health teacher. There was a lot in sex education that I didn't learn from my parents and probably never would. I didn't learn how to have sex without consequence, I just learned how to be healthy and stay that way. The things I learned stuck with me through my adult years as well.
So isn't that the point of sex education? To keep as many people in the know healthy?
Please send comments to jduffy@gccvoice.com
