where do we go from here with sex ed?
Unpublished post, originally written 12/24/08 for my now defunct state of sex education blog on gURL.
What’s our problem? Why is the American teen pregnancy rate twice as high as Canada’s and the UK’s, and eight times as high as the rest of Western Europe’s?
Why do teens still get STDs in record numbers?
How can we fill our TV shows and billboards with images of sultry looking preteens, yet turn around and punish kids for actually experimenting with their sexuality?
And ultimately, how can we, as a society, help teens grow into sexually healthy adults?
When it comes to young people and sex, we are nation of hypocrites. One way to improve the sexual health of our youth is to call out our contradictions. We need to accept that culturally we aren’t on the cutting edge of this issue. We also need to be willing to challenge some of our most deeply ingrained assumptions about the risks of teen sex, and acknowledge some of the benefits to having a more open attitude about a topic many people still consider taboo.
Now that is a pretty tall order.
But there is something concrete we can do to get to that place. Comprehensive sex education, not just for teens, but for adults as well.
This isn’t just a crazy idea. it’s something I’ve actually seen work.
A few years ago, I ran a sex ed. program for the parent’s of my HIV peer educators. It turned out that having never gotten sex ed themselves, a lot of the parents I worked with knew even less about these issues than their kids! But offering a few seminars for them made a huge difference both in their knowledge, as well as in their attitudes towards their kids’ sexuality.
But convincing parents that they need sex ed on a large scale is a tall order. Do you think your parents would take a sex ed class if your school offered one? Would you even want them to?
