Essay on Sex Education

Submitted By Charlie1003
Words: 1400
Pages: 6

Sexual education is a term used to describe education about human sexual anatomy, reproduction, intercourse, reproductive health, emotional relations, reproductive rights and responsibilities, abstinence, contraception, and other aspects of human sexual behavior. Sexual education in schools educate the young about physical, emotional, and mental health, not only affecting them but those they interact with and therefore should be given as a class in schools.

In the last couple of centuries these courses instituted to be of great health value have been taken away from children who need them. With a plethora of new bills, it was stated that the state has the right to choose if they feel it is important to give sexual education to their youth. In New York City, Thou shall not teach public school students sex education, or give them lessons on HIV and AIDS in classrooms owned by the Catholic Church. As a result of a longstanding but little-known agreement between church and city officials, dozens of city schools that lease church-owned buildings must take students off site for sex education. (10 Reasons)

The whole idea of sex education in our schools, and how comprehensive sex education should be are controversial subjects. The more conservative people in our society would rather just tell kids to abstain and leave it at that, but does that really solve our problem? This whole idea harkens back to the days of marrying young girls off to older men without telling them

about what a wedding night entails. Too little information in my mind can be just as bad as giving kids the wrong kind of information. (Carnal)

There are several things that go into the thought of essential sexual education in all schools, all over. One of these points being that sex ed is needed for common knowledge. Mostly in inner city youth, the lack of knowledge leads them down dark paths of disease and infections.

Sex is a subject that is not really open to children because parents find it difficult to talk to them about it. Many parents aren't comfortable discussing sex, contraceptives and infections. Many prefer to hope that their children are figuring it out from other sources such as television, movies, their friends and school. This is a very dangerous hit and miss method, this leaves children in the dark, and causes them to use misleading information, or to at the most extreme guess and make in some cases disastrous mistakes. (10 reasons) Children are bombarded daily by the media with sexual topics and images. Sexual conversation is everywhere you turn. If a child was to turn on the television, read the newspaper, or surf the internet to find sexual themed media. It is very easy access to it, and these media often do not provide accurate information either.

Studies have shown that when kids are given comprehensive sex education in school, the rates for teens getting pregnant or contracting STD’s goes down. Also children are having sex at earlier ages. 63% of kids who are high school age have had sex by the time they reach their senior year. If this isn't a scary thought to parents of teens, it should be, especially if they haven't taken the time to sit their kids down and explain consequences or how to take precautions. (PolicyMic)

Rates for teens getting and transmitting STD’s are soaring. That's a very scary thought; our kids are clearly not getting the message about safe sex practices because the rates on teens and STD’s are up and climbing. There is a need to educate our kids before they get to the point of being sexually active so they don't wind up contracting diseases and or getting pregnant in the first place. (PolicyMic) Of course many people think of the conservative method saying that telling kids to abstain, or "just say no" to sex only fuels the fire. Often when you tell a kid not to do something without explaining why, they are going to go right out and do it anyway. This is human nature. It is far