Hi, welcome to reality. Before you continue on your way, I’d like to provide you with a quick fact.
Young people have sex.
Hopefully this doesn’t catch you by surprise. If you’ve spent much time in reality before, you know this to be true.
But did you know that the average age that most Americans engage in sexual intercourse is 17?
This is scary. Frightening. And not because teenagers are having sex. This is scary because our current sexual education programs leave many, if not most, teenagers completely unprepared to safely engage in sexual activity.
Recently, John Oliver did a segment on his show, "Last Week Tonight," about the flaws in the way we handle sexual education. This video has spread rapidly around the Internet, and to that I say, thank goodness. It’s about time that people take notice of how many sex ed programs are failing to prepare our students.
Here are just a few of the points Oliver mentioned.
It is necessary for sexual education to be taught in schools.
Many people believe that sex ed should not be taught in schools and rather should be taught in the home. Without even thinking about how awkward and uncomfortable some parents feel when having this conversation, we need to consider this logically. We do not trust parents to teach their children calculus, for obvious reasons—the may teach it incorrectly, incompletely, or not teach it at all. Therefore, it is unacceptable to rely on parents to teach sexual education, something extremely more prevalent in most students’ lives than calculus ever will be.
When sexual education is taught, it must be comprehensive and accurate.
Currently, only 13 states require sex ed to be medically accurate. That means that 37 states are literally allowed to tell their students false information, and unfortunately, this happens all the time. Students are lied to about the effectiveness of contraception, being told that they are much less effective than they actually are. This leads sexually active teens to forgo safety measure like contraceptives and birth control because they were taught that they don’t really work anyways.
Fun fact: Condoms are 98 percent effective when you use them correctly.
Want to see how this translates? Oliver explains that in Mississippi, educators are not allowed to demonstrate how to use condoms. Teenagers are not taught how to correctly use contraceptives. Incidentally, Mississippi is the state with the second highest teen pregnancy rate.
Many people believe in the philosophy that if you don’t teach them about it, they won’t do it. This is where abstinence-only “sexual education” comes in. In this type of program, students are taught that they should not have sex until marriage and that is the only option. Many schools teach this, and yet, the truth of the matter is that abstinence-only education does not deter teens from having sex. It only sends them into the world unprepared to make safe decisions if and when they choose to be sexually active. In fact, “abstinence-only education does not reduce and likely increases teen pregnancy rates.”
Yet leaving teens completely unprepared is not the only harm that abstinence-only education causes. This program teaches that waiting until marriage to have sex is the only right choice. Therefore, enforcing the idea that those who have had sex are making the wrong choice. Whether or not a person chooses to be abstinent or not is completely up to them. Neither choice is better than the other. However, many abstinence-only educators use metaphors to compare girls who have had sex to a chewed piece of gum or a used toothbrush. This is seriously messed up. Not only is it teaching kids to slut-shame, but, as Oliver shows in his video, it adds to the shame that sexual assault victims already feel towards something they had no control over.
On top of shaming students and providing them with inaccurate information, sex education is also problematic in the way in handles homosexuality. Students are rarely taught any information about sexual activity in homosexual relationships. In fact, 8 states actually legally limit the information that can be taught about homosexuality. Not only is this harmful to those students who identify as LGBTQ, but it’s also harmful for those who aren’t as well. By completely ignoring homosexuality in sex ed, educators are reinforcing heteronormativity, teaching more and more generations of students that non-straight identities are not normal and should not be talked about.
To sum up, here are a few quick reminders.
Some people have sex.
Some people don’t.
This a choice, and either option is okay.
We need to prepare our students for either option so that they can make safe and healthy decisions.
John Oliver also talks about other important issues in his video, like consent. You can (and should!) view that video here: http://www.hbo.com/last-week-tonight-with-john-oliver/episodes/02/48-august-9-2105/video/ep-48-clip-sex-ed.html?autoplay=true
