Imagine trying to perform surgery, or trying to color in the lines of a coloring book while blindfolded. What would be the end result? Would you miraculously perform the surgery flawlessly? Would you be able to color each and every segment of the book to look like the next Mona Lisa? In truth the patient you would be operating on would probably die, and the picture you were coloring on would look like someone vomited color on it.
Then I ask you, why should we expect teens to know how to be safe when being sexually active when no one ever taught them? I am talking about why we need adequate sexual education in chools rather than the hogwash that many schools are teaching their students in the current “Sex Education” classes across the United States. What most classes focus on in so called sex education classes is abstinence according to Dr. Kathy Greaves who works for the University Wire.
Dr. Kathy Greaves states that “176 million dollars every year go to school districts who adopt abstinence -only programs” (Greaves). It is true that abstinence is the ultimate form of protection from sexually transmitted diseases and pregnancy. However, when teenagers grow into adults and will inevitably become sexually active in oday’s society, the material they have been taught is their sex education class is near worthless because the student that was only taught abstinence as the sole way of protecting themselves.
Current sexual education curriculum is not working and there are three reasons why we should change it such as the government is wasting vast amount of money on it, it does not teach students how to identify and protect against STDS, and lastly sex education needs to encompass curriculum that is medically accurate and culturally up to date to be helpful to sexual health. First, sex education needs to embrace the knowledge about STDS including effects and treatments. To begin with many teens do not know the full effect of contracting specific STDS.
For example many teens do not know if a female contracts chlamydia she could potentially become infertile and not know because the symptoms of chlamydia in a female may not surface for a very long time. Thus, teens or adults who have not learned of this may want to know in case they wanted to have children naturally. Greg Arellano, a University Wire journalist, explains that thousands of teens contract STDS every year and do not even know it (Arellano). This is dangerous in today’s ociety because a profusion of teens are sexual active in today’s environment.
As a result of the large number of teens becoming infected with STDS, state legislators and school districts need to realize that we need to inform the students of the long term effects of STDS (Arellano). Next, sex education and teachers need to make a vital point to make teens know how to use proper contraception and protection. Lena Rawley, a University Wire journalist, explains two people between ages thirteen to twenty-nine are infected with HIV every hour! She also writes that over twenty million teenagers contract STDS every year (Rawley).
These numbers are outrageous and quite frankly appalling because the U. S. government spends about 176 million dollars a year on the so called “Sex Education” that is not working. In short, sex education should teach students about safe contraception and preventions, even going so far as to teach students how to put condoms on correctly to help suppress the rising number of teenage STD contraction rates. To include contraception in course curriculum is also important because of the rising numbers of teenage pregnancy.
Lena Rawley, University Wire journalist, reports that over 750,000 teenage girls become pregnant every year, and that eighty ercent of the pregnancies are unwanted (Rawley). To help prevent unwanted pregnancies and STDS sex education about contraceptives is imperative to inform teens about safe sex (Rawley). Furthermore, teenagers should know about treatment options should they ever have to contend with STDS. Lena Rawley explains that the information taught about HIV by law does not have to be medically accurate in thirty-eight states in the United States (Rawley).
This is scandalous because schools by law have the possibility to be teaching students false information about HIV and STDS to scare them into thinking that here are no treatment options for any STD. Teens need to be taught medically accurate knowledge about sexually transmitted diseases because anybody has the possibility to get one and should know how to handle contracting one.. In conclusion, sex education classes should encompass almost everything there is to know about STDS Second, the government is spending a lot of money on flawed sex education funding.
To begin with the government is spending a lot more money on abstinence only classes rather than classes that focus on protection of one’s self while being sexually active. Debra Hauser, CNN Wire Service journalist, rites about how the House of Representatives have passed a bill that restricts the funding of sex education programs that “normalize teen sexual activity as an expected behavior” as part of the new “No Child Left Behind” rewrite (Hauser). What the House of Representatives fail to understand is that teen sexual behavior is going to happen.
They are withholding valuable information from these students in hopes that they will not ever have sex before marriage and it is not working. In fact, Lena Rawley states that “in some states like Tennessee, sex education is only required if teenage pregnancy exceeds a certain percent” (Rawley). This makes the funding of sex education therefore pointless because now so many teens are pregnant. To make the funding to sex education not go to waste, then the government should change the restrictions on funding to allow more helpful sex education programs to get a foothold in schools to help make sure teens know about safe sex.
Next, sex education needs to be taught by professionals to get the maximum profit from government spending. I myself have taken part of the “Sex Education” class that was part of physical education. It was taught by my freshman P. E. teacher for three class periods out of the semester. When it was time to learn bout the birds and the bees we would go into the conference room in the back of the hallway that lead from the locker room, down the hall filled with regular school propaganda, and into a dull gray room with shoddy tables, uncomfortable metal chairs that were like blocks of concrete, and a projector.
We then had to sit through a rather uncomfortable slideshow while the teacher told us the names of various diseases that showed up on unfortunate individuals. After the slideshow, we then got a worksheet with fill in the blanks and a word bank. “This totally got me ready to face the world of sex” | sarcastically thought to yself after the ordeal was over. This class was in my honest opinion worthless because it is common knowledge of the names of STDS.
The P. E. teacher did not like teaching this part because he told the class that it was really not worth the time but he was required to teach it. In short, if we brought in professionals to teach sexual education instead of having P. E. teachers who are just doing what their told, then the government would be getting their money’s worth because a professional would go into full depth of STDS, contraceptives, and cultural sexual activities.
Another example, a statement rom CNN Wire journalist, Debra Hauser, explains that the “No Child Left Behind” rewrite says “the bill also prohibits funding for sex education programs that neglect to emphasize ‘the health benefits of abstinence’ or distribute contraception in K-12 schools” (Hauser). These ties into bad government spending because of the fact that the restrictions on funding are not allowing much, if not at all, information about sexual health to be taught by current educators.
To sum up, the government need to rewrite the spending bills on sexual edu help make the course be more informative. Lastly, sex education needs to medically accurate and ulturally up to date to be effective and helpful to sexual health. First, Christopher Marinelli, University Wire journalist, tells us that thirty-eight states do not require that sex education be mandated and that another forty-one do not require by law the that the information they teach be medically accurate (Marinelli).
This is dangerous because of the potential for false information to be spread in a school environment and could possibly harm someone later on in life. Yet another example of how a lack of proper sex education could be detrimental is that we live in the age where pornography is easily accessible. Lena Rawley, University Wire journalist, says that porn is the leading educator for teenagers in the United States. She states that porn could cause people to try and persuade someone to attempt an unwanted sexual act and potentially cause the possibility to increase the expectation of sex from women (Rawley).
Teenagers need to know that pornography should not be used as a source of information on sex and know that it is not accurate depiction. Lastly, sex education does not help students if the only form of protection taught is abstinence. There is nothing wrong with abstinence at all, but the problem is hen the curriculum being taught is meant to convince teens to wait until marriage. Teens are going to have sex; they just are in today’s world.
It should be in the best interest of lawmakers and educators to make sure that they are informed and can make smart choices when face with sexual situations. Christopher Marinelli explains that forty-seven percent of all high schools students have reported having sex in high school. Abstinence based education does not help these teens when they are already having sex (Marinelli). In summary we need to revise our sex education programs to make sure they are medically correct nd will help in today’s generation.
In conclusion, the three reasons why we need to change current sex education curriculum is because students need to know everything about STDS, that government spending is too much for ineffective programs, and that the course should include information that is medically accurate and culturally up to date to help ensure teens are informed to protect their health. My position that sex education needs changes are valid because of the cold hard facts that the current programs are not working because so many teens are contracting STDs and getting pregnant at a young age.
There are no standards to be seen when teaching sex education in school as of now. It is true that the ultimate way to prevent STDs and pregnancy at a young age is abstinence, but in order to take off the blindfold that is placed by current sex education, the public needs to convince lawmakers and educators in charge of sex education curriculum and funding to think about the health of the students taking sex education and the society we live in today.
