For my second blog post I would like to talk about how children in
the school system are introduced to and taught about sex and in some cases how
they are misinformed about it or not even taught the subject at all. I know
when I was going through school the sex education classes were mostly
abstinence classes and they taught us little to no safe sex practices, which
would have been way more practice than what they actually did. These classes
were so awkward and taught half-heartedly. I remember one of our abstinence
classes they made us all take a paper heart and walk around to other classmates
and ripping a piece off every time we talked to someone else. This was to teach
us that every time we had sex with someone that a piece of our heart would stay
with them so we needed to save our self for just one person that is right for
us. Needless to say it was utterly ridiculous and we as hormone driven high
school students learned absolutely nothing from it. Then the second part of our
abstinence education they basically sat us down for an entire period and showed
us STD ridden genitalia for 55 minutes and said that this would happen to us if
we had sex. Once again this did nothing to detour our sexuality and we went on
with our exploits, but they failed us in one big way. They never taught us how
to properly protect our partners or ourselves if and when we did engage in
sexual acts. There were several people in my class alone that ended up becoming
pregnant and some became pregnant right after high school and had to drop out
of college. The school system had failed us by leaning solely on abstinence
instead of using comprehensive sex education in its health classes. I feel like
the abstinence only courses were primarily taught to appease the religious
parents in the community and it was just the easiest and safest route to keep
anyone from getting offended, rather than teaching us students what we actually
needed to know in order to protect ourselves in the real world.
I
looked at some studies that argued whether abstinence only or comprehensive sex
education classes were more effective than the other. One of the main arguments
for the abstinence only argument is that if we teach students safe sex
practices then it will promote the students to have more sex thus leading to
more teen pregnancies and the spread of STD’s. But this appears to be the
contrary on many studies covering schools that taught safe sex practices. The
conclusion of one of these studies showed that there was no direct correlation
with increasing the risk of teenagers having sex. They also found that schools
that aught comprehensive sex education had less teen pregnancies than schools
that taught abstinence only. The reason being that if the students were going
to have sex anyway then these abstinence only programs would do little to
nothing to prevent this. So these kids will have sex with little to no
knowledge on how to protect themselves and end up pregnant or with some sort of
communicable disease. So they say it is better to have a hybrid program were
they teach that abstinence is definitely a effective option to prevent
pregnancy but also teach them that if they are going to have sex how to do it
properly and safely. So in order to try and spur conversation, my question to you all is what types of programs did
you all have in your schools and were they perceived as effective? Which do you
think should be taught in our school systems and why?
Sources:
Sources:
Abstinence-Only and Comprehensive Sex Education and the Initiation of Sexual Activity and Teen Pregnancy
Kohler, Pamela K. et al.
Journal of Adolescent Health , Volume 42 , Issue 4 , 344 - 351
Abstinence and abstinence-only education: A review of U.S. policies and programs
Santelli, John et al.
Journal of Adolescent Health , Volume 38 , Issue 1 , 72 - 81
I was a little surprised to learn that sex education was being taught as abstinence only in what sounds like a public school setting. I went to a private religious high school where sex education didn’t really exist. We had health class and sex was briefly mentioned, but only as something that should be saved for marriage. There was little to no discussion about birth control or contraceptives. If there was any, it was mostly negative. Pregnancy outside of marriage was usually considered a mistake or a punishment for premarital sex.
ReplyDeleteSex education is important to discuss in school settings, but it isn’t always taught in the most productive and helpful ways. Popular shows such as 16 & Pregnant and Teen Mom demonstrate that teenagers are having sex. These shows prove, however, that many teenagers aren’t being taught about safe sex or protecting against pregnancy. A policy that teaches students abstinence only is not effective in the high school setting. Teenagers are already exploring their sexuality, sometimes without all or the correct information. The safest thing to do would be to give teenagers information about safe sex, contraceptives, and birth control. By doing this, it would help prevent disease and unplanned pregnancy. It might even lower the teen pregnancy rate because information about safe sex would be more readily available.
Not only is the abstinence only policy unrealistic in schools, but it can also place blame and hint that the consequences of having sex are a punishment. For example, if a girl gets pregnant, she is the one that carries it around for nine months. It is much easier to place blame on the girl who is carrying the consequence of the “wrongdoing” than the father who could choose to deny it. In abstinence only classes, it is also easy to hint or outright say that pre-marital sex can lead to punishments such as disease or pregnancy. It was presented this way to me in my high school health class.
The lack of safe sex information available in schools that only teach abstinence can be harmful to the students. Without some information, they might not be able to make informed or safe decisions about their sex lives. There was a poster in my health class that described the ideal birth control. It showed an open condom wrapper. But instead of a condom, a wedding ring was shown to be inside. Apparently, the best birth control was getting married, not any actual safe sex practices. Even when someone was brave enough to ask questions, birth control was said to be unnecessary until marriage. Depending on who answered the question, sometimes birth control was not to be used at all.
Overall, safe sex education needs to be improved within the school system. It is important to recognize that teens will have sex, no matter what the sex education class teaches them. Instead of trying to prevent it, there should be information available to them on safe sex. Scaring them into abstinence is ineffective and unreasonable. Giving them more information will help protect them from disease and unplanned pregnancy, not encourage them to be more sexually active.
Outside of television and film, everything I learned about sex before I became sexually active came from Mrs. Meyers' health class. For six weeks out of the year in sixth and seventh grade, then an entire year in eighth grade, my classmates and I became pretty well-versed in sexual matters. In junior high, I was lucky enough to have a health class led by an open-minded and sexually liberal instructor.
ReplyDeleteDespite the fact that I grew up in a fairly small town in central Kentucky, it was generally known and accepted that Mrs. Meyers took things a bit further than “abstinence only” in the sex-education portion of the class; basically, she went above and beyond what was required. While it was certainly emphasized that abstinence is the only fool-proof way to protect oneself from sexually transmitted diseases and unwanted pregnancies, Mrs. Meyers also taught us the basics of how to use contraceptives, such as condoms. The class discussions definitely felt a bit awkward to me at the time, but it was fun and the instructor worked really hard to normalize conversations about sex and encouraged us to feel comfortable enough to ask questions in class or one-on-one. She even offered us real-world advice that is presumably unheard of in a public school setting (e.g. “the size of a man's penis makes no difference if he knows what to do with it”). Most importantly, she was honest and spoke to us like adults, admitting that we were teenagers, we would become sexually active, and we needed to know the truth about practicing safe sex. There are consistencies between the sex-ed class that Mr. Hayes described and my own, but I consider myself lucky for having a teacher whose perspective was much more realistic.
The heartbreaking truth is that the health and sex-education program at my junior high, as I knew it, has been eliminated. My brilliantly blunt and refreshingly realistic instructor now teaches sixth grade social studies/history. I fear for the sexual health of those students who probably receive a one-hour lecture from the local health department each year. Wholeheartedly, I believe that comprehensive sex-education in public schools is a must. In my own experience—though my school's program was more like a hybrid between comprehensive and abstinence only courses—learning safe sex practices did not morally corrupt me, or encourage me to become sexually active at an early age. As a culture, this is the direction in which we should be moving. A century later, many Americans are still stuck on the ideas that concerned Comstock and his successors. Just as the military tried to deny the facts and “save the morality” of soldiers in WWI by only distributing prophylaxes post-coitus, public schools that deny their students comprehensive sex-education are sending kids out into the world with no idea how to protect themselves when they DO become sexually active. When it comes to the prevention of STDs, and unwanted/teenage pregnancies, we MUST consider this as an issue of public health rather than one of morality. The sake of our youth depends on it.
I would first like to say that this is a very worthwhile topic, and I love that it came up. Learning about sex in a safe environment is something that every teen should have the opportunity to do. About your first question, sex ed. at my school was a short blurb in health class. The class itself was very ill structured and not taken seriously by anyone, the teacher included. Discussions on sex were heavily tilted towards abstinence and used fear and guilt to persuade us that sex was something we should not partake in. I also think this is largely due to the influence of religion in the area I grew up in. I think the movie “Sex Ed” on Netflix does a great job of explaining why abstinence only sex ed. is not a good thing. It is crucial that teens know that their “urges” are normal and that they know these urges are nothing that they should be ashamed about. Where else are teens going to learn about safe sex practices if not in school? Yes, the internet is a possibility, but, while useful, it is also filled with incredible amounts of false information. Books? What teenager is going to walk into a bookstore and buy a book on the right way to have sex? I was afraid to even order food in a restaurant with another teen taking my order at that age. It just seems like common sense to me that school is a good place for kids to learn about sensitive things with people they can trust. We cannot ignore where teens learn most things that they do not learn in school: each other. The last thing the world needs is a bunch of hormonal teenagers trying to delve into their sexualities when they do not know a condom from Reynold’s Wrap. I think that pretty much answers the second question.
ReplyDeleteThere is one parallel that jumped out at me as soon as I read your post. You wrote “One of the main arguments for the abstinence only argument is that if we teach students safe sex practices then it will promote the students to have more sex thus leading to more teen pregnancies and the spread of STD’s.” I could not help but relate this idea back to the use of condoms in the military in the early 1900s. In this era, military officials believed that, despite their usefulness in preventing venereal diseases, the use of condoms would promote sexual promiscuity and corrupt the morality of men. This idea bleeds over into modern sex ed. practices as we still fear teaching safe sex practices will result in poor moral behavior.
It is also important to me that I agree with you that students should be left with the impression that remaining abstinent is a decision that they should feel free to make. I believe that sex ed. should teach students to have sex safely. It should also let them know that the decision to have sex is theirs and theirs alone. It is important that they know that whether they have sex or not, as long as it is done safely, it was a good choice as long as it was the right choice for them.
I remember my sex education from high school very clearly. It was a week-long unit of the mandatory P.E. class everyone took as a sophomore. The whole class of about 50 students crowded into the band room to listen to some guy talk about abstinence and show us images of STDs that haunted our nightmares for weeks afterwards. Although this was “sex week,” he barely talked about sex. Instead, he focused on how to avoid it and the evils of having sex. He talked about how the emotional attachments having sex (through the classic gluing of two paper hearts together, and then ripping them apart to leave pieces of each color paper on the other) can have a lasting effect on your heart. “You will always have a part of someone’s heart on yours if you have sex with them.” After he appealed to those of us who think with our hearts, he proceeded to cater to those who need physical evidence of the consequences of doing things. He showed us gruesome images of red and irritated genitalia that leaked puss and other unhealthy fluids. If the heart analogy did not convince you to keep our genitals far, far, far away from others, this pictures sure did. I left “sex week” knowing (but in actuality, not really) three things: 1. I was going to keep my virginity until marriage because I wanted only one person to have an impact my heart 2. if I had premarital sex I would get pregnant and 3. if I had premarital sex, I would contract an STD and my genitals would be on a PowerPoint like the one he showed us in class. My sex ed was just as comprehensive as Coach Carl’s from Mean Girls. “Don’t have sex, because you’ll get pregnant and die.” While I left with the determination to keep my legs knotted at the knee, others in my class left feeling guilty for participating in acts they had previously felt comfortable with. They sat through an hour and half of basically belittlement and shaming as this guy talked about how maintaining your virginity was of top priority. I did not understand their feelings of guilt until my first time. I do not regret my first time, but every now and then I look back and understand these guilty feelings my peers had felt sitting in that class. He didn’t discuss contraception. He mentioned condoms once or twice in passing, and never mentioned birth control. This had the adverse effect of numerous girls from my high school graduating early, graduating pregnant, or not graduating at all. Ironically, however, he did discuss what a young woman should do if she did become pregnant and provided the females in the room with pregnancy hotlines and services. That seems counter-productive, if you ask me. Consensual sex is a choice, and the choice to or not have sex should be made on an educated, background of knowledge. Thus, providing a comprehensive sex ed class providing information about all things sex should be a no brainer. Just as the education system provides extensive knowledge and caters to the needs of students in math, science, history, etc. to prepare students for the real world, it should also do this for a topic nearly everyone will experience at least once in their life.
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