Sex Education In America Essay

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Talking to American kids about sex is becoming more and more difficult. In the ever-changing landscape of our westernized society, one constant is the pervasive theme of sex. From magazine covers and television to the Internet and roadside billboards, sex sells in this culture and we, as people, are constantly bombarded by sexually based messages. It is thereby understandable that children and young adults would be confused about sex; especially since the adult population has become less than open on the subject of sexuality. With parents unwilling to talk to their children, the job of educating America s youth about sexuality, and the dangers thereof, has fallen to the public school system. The same public school system that graduates students who cannot read their diplomas is, in our modern American culture, responsible for teaching children about sex. The concern of parents and teachers alike across the country is how to best educate children on this touchy societal subject and what message should be most prominent in that process. These programs range in focus from an abstinence-only message to full discussions of sexual orientation and contraceptives and often times it depends on location of the school as to what focus the children will be subject to. This research will show, however, that our society fails to provide children with a consistent message regarding sexual development and that programs nationwide should be standardized in order to better prepare and protect young people for their sexual maturation.

First it is important to understand where teenagers are coming from in order to best assess the needs of sex ed programs. As shown in Chart 1, more than half of the high-schoolers in America reported themselves as having had sexual intercourse in 1999, according to statistics published by the Centers for Disease Control . This is an increase in percentage over two years ago, however it is a decrease of over four percent since 1991. The median age for first sexual intercourse in America was sixteen and one half years, placing the average teen in their late sophomore/early junior year at the time of their first experience with sex. Just over 8 percent of the high school population, or over sixteen percent of those reporting sexual activity during high school, said that their first experience was before they had reached the age of thirteen . At the age of thirteen, most students are in the seventh grade while many programs do not include serious discussion on the risks involved with sexual activity until later in high school.

Source 1 - Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, Youth Risk Behavior Survey Chart 1

Many municipalities have been, in recent years, pushing to enact an abstinence-only message in their school s sex ed programs. Title 42 of the United States Code, the set of laws enacted that govern the nation, provides additional federal funding to schools and programs in states that promote abstinence. Even more funding can be obtained for schools that teach abstinence from sexual activity outside marriage as the expected standard for all school age children. Four in ten teachers consider abstinence to be the most important message regarding sex education in schools and seven in ten believe that students who receive abstinence-focused education are less likely to be sexually active . States, including Virginia, Texas, West Virginia, Oklahoma, Kansas, Iowa and the District of Columbia, all take advantage of the federal funding programs and incorporate a heavy focus on abstinence in to their sexual education programs. The alarming trend, however, in abstinence education is that some sixty percent of teachers who did teach with an abstinence-only message either presented no information on contraceptives at all or taught that they were ineffective . This indicates that teachers are delivering, at best, less than all the facts in their classrooms and, at worst, a less than truthful representation of the facts that their students would need in making choices regarding their sexuality.

Over ninety-three percent of public high schools in America offer some kind of course on sexuality or HIV, 510 junior and senior high schools have health clinics linked to the school and more than 300 schools have condoms available on campus . With a teen pregnancy rate more than double that of other industrialized nations and over one million teenagers becoming pregnant each year, the question of why American teens need sex education is asked and answered . Moreover, teens have the highest rate of sexually transmitted diseases of any age group. One in four teens will contract an STD before reaching the age of twenty-one and one in four of new HIV infections each year occurs in a teen.

The problem seems to be that the approach we are taking is not the most effective in reaching teens. Canada, England, France, Sweden and the Netherlands all have first intercourse ages similar to that of the United States, yet their teen pregnancy rates are at least less than half that of ours . The difference is not in the availability of contraceptives, but in the focus of the message delivered by the sex ed program. The foreign countries listed above base their programs on openness about sex, consistent messages throughout society and open access to contraception and by doing so, have lowered the occurrence of negative sexual outcomes. In the United States, while more than ninety percent of teachers believe contraception should be taught, only half believe it should be taught beginning in seventh grade . What this means is that we are teaching children about contraception later in life than we were teaching during the 1980 s. America is taking the exact opposite approach that is being taken in other industrialized nations and, not surprisingly, is achieving opposite results. In the state of Texas, for example, while the state promotes an abstinence-based education in schools, some 21,752 girls under the age of seventeen gave birth in 1998; almost 13,000 of those babies were born to people of Hispanic descent, 5,500 to white teens and 3,500 to black mothers. ...

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