When I was a kid growing up in the early 2000s, I’d watch shows like Lizzie McGuire and Evan Stevens and had readily decided that I understood exactly what high school was going to be like before I had even got there. One of the common scenes of TV shows depicting teenagers such as Lizzie McGuire and Even Stevens were those episodes where the kids in a sex ed/health classroom were given an electronic baby doll to care for with a partner for about a week or so.

When I got a little older, the image of sex ed/health classes began to change ever so slightly. In middle school, I began to watch shows and movies like Degrassi and Mean Girls, where sex, of course, was more heavily represented than in PG shows like Lizzie McGuire and Even Stevens. In these shows, or in shows like these, students were shown in classrooms learning to do things like put a condom on over a banana, or otherwise, learning about various methods of birth control. At this point in time, I thought that I had an even better idea of what high school sex ed was going to be like – but I couldn’t have been more wrong.

By the time I had reached my sophomore year of high school, abstinence-only sex ed programs and health classes were in place everywhere. At my school, health class was required to be taken by all sophomores, but of course, as the title implies – health class wasn’t JUST about sex. It was course also about dieting, nutrition, exercise, drugs and their impact on the body, mental illness, how to administer CPR in an emergency situation, AND sex. Not to say that each of these topics is not certainly very important, but the problem with trying to squeeze each of these important topics into a semester-long course is that each of these topics, in turn, are forced to be taught by instructors in somewhat of a neglectful manner.

Sex ed for us was a two-week long or so mini-course taught within the semester-long health course. The instructor was not my instructor for the health course itself, but a random, yet very kind lady who had been trained under the state of Ohio to educate students on what Ohio believed to be important for students of this age to know about sexual intercourse. It is difficult to recall precisely what was learned, as it was taught so quickly in such a short time frame, but I do recall a packet of information written in black ink that landed on my desk day one of the mini-course, which we were instructed to fill out each day as the next two weeks went by.

The lady would ask us questions about what we had learned in class, such as STDs, and we were given jolly ranchers for doing so. Again, because this was a short mini-course, information about what to do in the case of acquiring an STD was very limited in itself. The main message was that the best way to stop a consequence like an STD from occurring was simply to avoid sex altogether.

We did not heavily discuss condoms, different condom brands, how to put on a condom, where to get condoms for very cheap or even for free, and so forth. Only the fact that condoms are, apparently, so unreliable that you may as well ditch them and avoid sex altogether.

The other major consequence of sexual intercourse is, of course, pregnancy. Of course, we did not go into detail about this particular topic of caring for an actual child, nor did we go into detail about birth control. I had no idea that such a thing as “spermicide” existed until about my senior year of high school. I did not know about the different kinds of birth control that there are – that it can be taken as a pill, a shot, or a bar implanted in your arm, nor did I learn about the best way to go about consulting a doctor to be placed on birth control.

What I was told about birth control, of course, was simply that it is also not 100 percent effective, it cannot even protect STDs, and therefore, we may as well ditch the birth control and not have sex at all.

I think that this overall message of abstinence as the only proper method of preventing the consequences that can result from sex is not only complete bullshit but extremely dangerous for children and teenagers. The truth is, kids are going to do whatever the hell they want to do, regardless of what an authority figure tells them to do – particularly unruly teenagers who believe that they know everything that there is to know about the planet.

If we know that children are going to partake in something as “dangerous” as sexual intercourse, why in the world would we not give them the tools to do it properly? Ditching the condoms and the birth control in favor of abstinence is just a ridiculous assumption that the majority of teenagers do not follow – hence teenage pregnancy as the most evident result of this.

The other major issue that I have with sex ed as is taught in public schools in the US is that they’re actually missing a third major consequence of sex that is completely taboo to even mention. We’ve talked about pregnancy and STDs, but what about the emotional turmoil of what we know as hook-up culture? What about that feeling young girls get in the pit of their stomach after giving their virginity to someone who’s promised to love them and then doesn’t return their texts a few weeks later? I was told that if I had sex, my urine could (inevitably) end up burning as a result. I was rarely if ever told that I could have a broken heart.

Everything that concerns sex that was not taught to me in school was taught by various other resources, including parents, friends, the internet, and even a few books. I’ve learned about various resources that I can turn to in order to prevent the consequences of sex from occurring, or how to get help if they’ve already happened.

I’ve learned about various treatments of STDs, including the fact that some cannot be treated at all. I’ve learned about the various choices that I have as a woman to deal with the consequences of an unplanned pregnancy. I’ve learned about the good, and also the bad, effects of birth control, the toll it can have on your body, and how deciding to suddenly stop taking birth control can be very dangerous for your reproductive system.

I’ve learned about the various emotional consequences of sex that are rarely discussed: low self-esteem, the emotional toll of an unwanted pregnancy, the broken heart that women must deal with if they experience a miscarriage. I’ve learned that there are different ways to have sex apart from penetration, particularly important where the LGBTQ community is concerned, which is not mentioned in state curriculum whatsoever. I’ve learned about the power and the utmost importance of consensual sexual relationships, and what to do if unwanted sexual advances are made. I’ve learned that our own sexualities can actually be relatively flexible and that it is both normal and healthy for teenagers to ponder their own sexual orientation.

All of this and more was taught to me from various resources other than the one single resource that is specifically meant to educate us. These topics were either never mentioned or were mentioned but in a very limited amount of time.

Abstinence-only sexual education needs to be completely retracted and transformed from the bottom-up. It truly is the only way we can guarantee the complete health and safety, at least where it regards sex, of the children of tomorrow.

At the end of the two-week mini-course, we reached the end of the packet. We were told to write our signature on a line next to a “contract” of sorts, promising the state of Ohio that we would abstain from sex until marriage.

Between you and me 5 years later, I did not sign that silly thing.