Sex education is the act of informing younger and adult generations about everything they need to know about sex. Sex education is one of the most controversial issues in education, which has been floating on educational institutions since ages.
Sex education is not just about sex. It includes other sensitive issues like sexual health, sexual reproduction, sexuality and others that parents often feel uncomfortable talking with their children. Therefore, it becomes the responsibility of schools to address this issue, and inform and educate students about it as much as possible.
Often, sexual education in schools is considered as a recreational course rather than a serious issue. There are many pros and cons of sexual education being taught in the public schools.
Pros of sex education in schools:
– Classes are gender-exclusive. This saves embarrassment among students and teach them only what they need to know based on their gender.
– Properly taught, sexual education could become a regular and ongoing Human Anatomy and Biology complete with tests and grading that goes toward graduation credits.
– Students can be taught the correct terms of the reproductive system of sexually transmitted diseases and contraception birth instead of “street slang.”
– Myths surrounding sex can be dispelled (for example, can not get pregnant the first time).
– Studies show that many teenagers become sexually active before the inclusion of educational classes. Principles of inclusion of classes has been shown to help students stay or to abstain or at least be responsible if they are active.
– Proper education can have an impact on the prevention of sexual problems in adulthood.
Cons of sex education in schools:
– Students may still be subject to embarrassment or excitable by subject matter. This can make for out of control classrooms if students take to laugh or make inappropriate comments.
– Most education is taught as a brief interlude in physical education or health class. This is not enough time to relate effectively to serious material.
– Often, sexual education can go against moral or religious beliefs of an individual. Many schools do not teach abstinence-only, but to teach how to have sex safely, while many of the religious and family stress marriage before intercourse.
– Sex education is often seen as a “recreational” course and not a serious issue (this is a direct correlation with the fact that there are no grades or scores to be derived from class).
– Teachers are not always adequately trained to teach sexual education and may violate their own beliefs or morals on the subject rather than continuing with the facts.
– The attitudes of parents, educators and religious leaders in the community can make the stuff that vary from state to state or even school-to-school.