4Sex Education
Imagine coming home one day from what appeared to be a normal day at work; you arrive to find your 15 year old daughter or granddaughter sitting on the couch waiting for you. As you walk into the room, she looks up and has tears streaking down her face. "We need to talk," she says quietly. It's obvious that whatever she has to say won't be even remotely good. You sit down and prepare yourself mentally for whatever trivial news that she may have. But that trivial news isn't so inconsequential, it's life altering and staggering. With many tears, she informs you that she's pregnant, proving the point by showing you the positive test. Your intestines clench and you are immediately upset, several questions flash through your mind: How could this happen? What did I do wrong? What could have been done to prevent this? The answer is simple, mandatory sex education in public schools from the fourth grade to the twelfth grade.
Sex education has been a controversial subject throughout history, more so since the 1960's and the era of 'free love'. This topic has been furiously debated between parents and schools, and schools and the state. Every time, the debate comes to a stalemate where no one is happy and the children are still not getting the adequate information they need. The two main arguments held have been where it should be taught, and how it should be taught, if it is in schools. But in order to adequately answer these questions, we first need to look at why sex education should be taught.
Sex education should be taught for three main reasons: the dramatic increase and amount of teenage pregnancies, the increased rate of Sexually Transmitted Infections (STI's) in teens, and the cost of teenage childbearing to the average American. These three factors are prominent reasons why this country can no longer ignore this rising epidemic.
According to the Center for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), roughly forty percent of teens in Ohio are pregnant by the time they turn eighteen. So for every one thousand teens in any given high school across this state, forty have a child before graduation. The Guttmacher Institute, which focuses on teen health, stated that "of the 750,000 teen pregnancies that occur each year [across the U.S.], 82% are unintended. More than one quarter end in abortion." That means that for every forty teen pregnancies in Ohio, thirty-three are unintended and ten end in an abortion. Forty percent may not seem like a large number, or a very effective number, to some, but I know what this statistic can do. By my senior year in high school, thirty percent of the girls had at least one child; this doesn't include any children from our senior year, abortions, multiple children or the effects of the male students. In total, we had about forty children that our class alone could claim (that we knew of) out of the ninety students that graduated.
But it isn't just Ohio that has staggering teen pregnancy rates; Mississippi has a pregnancy rate of sixty-eight percent, the highest in the country. Information on the CDC website shows that America's highest rates of teen pregnancy are in southern states. The Guttmacher Institute, Erik Eckholm of the NY Times, Advocates for Youth, Avert, and the CDC all recognize and state that the U.S. has one of the highest, if not the highest, teen pregnancy rates in the developed world. This rate is twice as high as those in the UK and Canada, and eight times as high as those in the Netherlands and Japan. In 2007 alone, according to a recently published article in the New York Times by Erik Eckholm, there were about 4.3 million births which "just edged out the figure for 1957, at the height of the baby boom." The overall teen birth rate in the United States was about forty three percent in 2007 (the CDC total for 2006 was about forty-two percent, eighty-three percent of those would be from Hispanics, and increasing roughly one percent a year from then), for that 4.3 million births, 1.9 million were from individuals under nineteen.
Every year, roughly nine million new STI's occur among teens and young adult in the U.S. (Guttmacher Institute). This number doesn't include preexisting diseases from other years. In the 2006 Disease Profile, published by the CDC, seven percent of females between fifteen and twenty-four have Chlamydia, the 2006 rates of gonorrhea were highest in those between twenty and twenty-four (females between fifteen and nineteen had a rate of eighty-six percent), congenital syphilis had higher rates among teen African Americans and Hispanics, 371,000 new cases of genital herpes were reported in 2006, and thirty-five percent of females between fourteen and nineteen have the Human Papillomavirus (HPV). But that isn't just shocking, the rates of HIV for people younger than twenty-two is twenty-five percent, according to an article written by Molly Masland of MSNBC. In a group of twenty randomly selected students, between fifteen and twenty-four, it's assumable that one would have Chlamydia, two would have syphilis, five would have HIV, seven would have HPV, and seventeen would have gonorrhea, based on these statistics.
The rates of teen pregnancies and STI's are increasing every year in the U.S., but so is the average cost per year. According to , "Between 1991 and 2004 there have been more that 271,900 teen births in Ohio, costing taxpayers a total of $6.9 billion over that period." Seven billion dollars over thirteen years averages out to be a little over five hundred million dollars a year. During this time though, teen birth rates in Ohio decreased by thirty-five percent. So at a low, taxpayers were still paying five hundred million dollars, but since 2004 the rates have been increasing causing more tax dollars going to these young mothers. National teen childbearing costs taxpayers nine billion dollars a year (). So in our struggling economy, we pay kids having kids nine billion dollars a year so they can get through life.
The rates of pregnancies and STI transmissions, and the costs of teen births to taxpayers are overwhelming, this leads us to the first highly debatable point in sex education, where should sex education be taught, at home or in schools? This is a question that many scientists, both reproductive health specialists and disease orientated specialists, debate constantly. When sex education is taught in schools, students can learn in a healthy, safe environment with friends, making this touchy topic more comfortable. Schools teach the subject in specific blocked periods that provide enormous amounts of information with little to no impartial viewpoints. Avert, an organization that focuses on 'averting' the transmission of HIV/AIDS, informs the reader that some countries are now encouraging the students involvement in sex education courses because "the involvement of young people in delivering programs may reinforce messages as they model attitudes and behavior in their peers." Sex education in schools provides the situation where students can learn from their peers. The negative of teaching in schools is that parental beliefs are not expressed, and the lessons are not well suited to advising the individual. Regardless of the downfalls, students can gain the information that they most need when considering sexual abstinence or sexual intercourse. Dr. Joseph McIlhaney of the Medical Institute of Sexual Health stated, in an interview with PBS, that parents aren't entirely appropriate to teach comprehensive sex education because "parents today have not quite gotten the fact that if their kids are involved sexually they're in a world of disease that's much more dangerous [than the one their parents grew up in]." Parents didn't grow up with such high rates of teen pregnancies and STI's so they are unknowledgeable on the effects of sexual intercourse in today's world. Sex education in schools can provide this information, supported by a ton of statistical and scientific evidence.
On the other side, most scientists agree that sex education should primarily be taught in the home so that parents can include their beliefs into the 'talk', and so that the parent knows what information their child is learning. The parent is able to format the education around what they believe are correct practices for their teen. Dr. Douglas Kirby, former Director of Research for the National Campaign to Prevent Teenage Pregnancy, and author of numerous studies of sexual education programs (including Emerging Answers), stated in an interview for PBS that, "Parents tend to want their children to behave responsibly, sexually. So if young people are attached to their parents, they're less likely to have unprotected sex." Dr. McIlhaney also recognized that parents need to take some initiative with their child's sexual education, "kids who are most likely to avoid risky behaviors were those who had a good connectiveness with their parents." Avert provides more information to this side, "it has been shown that in countries like the Netherlands, where many families regard it as an important responsibility to talk openly with children about sex and sexuality, this contributes to greater cultural openness about sex and sexuality and improved sexual health among young people." But sex education solely in the home isn't always the most effective choice. In today's struggling economy, more people than ever are spending more hours at work to gain the same amount of money they would have obtained even three years ago. Because of this situation, parents spend less time at home with their children; therefore, they have less time to inform their child about sexual health. They are also overexerting themselves to provide for their kids so they no longer have the effort and energy to talk about sex. Basically, parents don't have the time, effort, energy or complete knowledge to teach their child about sexual health.
Whether in the home or in schools, generally all scientists agree that sex educations needs to be taught. Sex education is about "finding out what young people already know and adding to their existing knowledge and correcting any misinformation they may have (Avert)." It works best when both parents and schools work together to provide the necessary information. But, how should sex education be taught in schools? There are three different types of sexual health courses: comprehensive, abstinence only, and abstinence plus.
Comprehensive sex programs provide information about disease, pregnancy, protection, etc., but they don't emphasize abstinence until marriage, a common belief among most parents. While this style of sex education provides ample knowledge about diseases, it doesn't take into account parental beliefs or feelings. It doesn't express all the alternatives to sexual intercourse. Arguments against this type of sex education try to persuade people that teaching teens about sex and condom use causes sexual activity. Advocates for Youth, an organization focusing in teen health, states that, "comprehensive sex education is effective, [and] does not promote sexual risks." They also state that these programs "delay the initiation of sex as well as reduce the frequency of sex, the number of new partners, and the incidence of unprotected sex, and/or increase the use of condoms and contraception among sexually active participants." In her article, "The Sex Ed Dilemma: Beyond the Birds and the Bees," Molly Masland cites a study by the World Health Organization, "In a study of 35 sex education programs around the world, the World Health organization found there is no evidence that comprehensive programs encourage sexual activity."
The polar opposite of comprehensive programs is abstinence only programs. These programs provide minimal information about diseases, contraception, and protection (only stating the negatives of sex), and purely focus on abstinence being the only way. Dr. McIlhaney supports these programs, "abstinence programs are more comprehensive than the comprehensive programs, because they are more truthful." But not everyone believes in these courses, Advocates for Youth call abstinence only educational programs dangerous, inactive and ineffective. The Society for Adolescent Medicine recently declared that "abstinence-only programs threaten fundamental human rights to health, information, and life (Advocates for Youth)." The Guttmacher Institute revealed that "there are three federal programs dedicated to funding restrictive abstinence-only education: Section 510 of the Social Security Act, the Adolescent Family Life Act's teen pregnancy prevention component and Community-Based Abstinence Education (CBAE). The total funding for these programs is $176 million for FY 2006."
Abstinence plus courses are a middle ground to comprehensive and abstinence only programs. These provide knowledge on disease, contraception, and pregnancies, as well as the choice of abstinence. Some scientists, including those at the Guttmacher Institute, consider this type of program to be comprehensive based on the extensive information, while others consider it a different category because it teaches abstinence. Dr. Kirby fully supports these programs, "programs that emphasize abstinence as the safest approach, but also encourage those who are sexually active to use condoms and contraceptives, do not increase sexual behavior; they do not harm." The Guttmacher Institute also states that "evidence shows that comprehensive sex education programs [that] provide information about both abstinence and contraception can help delay the onset of sexual activity among teens, reduce the number of sexual partners and increase contraceptive use when they become sexually active."
So far, we have looked at why sex education should be taught, where it should be taught, and how it should be taught. The final argument, and most controversial, is when sex education should begin.
Avert states that "sex education that works starts early, before young people reach puberty and before they have developed patterns of behavior." Girls hit puberty as young as ten and eleven, and boys hit puberty around their twelfth or thirteenth birthday. Starting sex education in the fourth grade means that most students haven't reached puberty yet, and most haven't started sexual habits. Kids are growing up faster and faster as the years roll by because of our society. By the fourth grade, most of the students already know about sex, most of the information coming from older siblings and their friends, or crude jokes made by adults. Regardless of the source, most of the information is incorrect and needs to be corrected before sexual intercourse begins. Not providing this information, or fixing misinformation, means that these students are missing important health information that could result in their pregnancy, them gaining an STI, or them potentially dying due to HIV/AIDS. Children in the fourth grade are old enough where the information won't scare them, but young enough to put the education into effect. When they have developed patterns of behavior, they are less likely to use their sexual health information. "It's not easy to change adolescent behavior, and we've certainly made a lot of mistakes over the years," Dr. Kirby stated in his interview. We have to educate children before their first time having sex.
Beginning sexual education in the fourth grade may seem like too young an age to some, but it's not as young as some have proposed for. A bill that ran through the Illinois senate in 2005 wanted sex education to be taught from kindergarten to the twelfth grade. Had the bill gone through, it would have provided comprehensive sex education based on age. President Obama took heat for signing this bill during his second run as Illinois senator and during his early days running for president. Television ads ran stating that he wanted complete sex education to be taught to the kindergarteners. To defend himself, in an article from the New York Times by Larry Rohter, he stated that "I understand the main objective of the legislation, as it pertained to kindergarteners, to be to teach them how to defend themselves against sexual predators."
No one wants their daughter or granddaughter to be pregnant at fifteen; teen pregnancies are one hundred percent preventable with education. But there's a problem, there is no federal program dedicated to sex education. Currently, only thirty-five states mandate either sex education or education about HIV/AIDS and other STI's, with eighty-five percent of the public school districts teaching abstinence only (Guttmacher Institute). In 2002, about one third of teens nationally never received any type of sex education (Guttmacher Institute).These teens are missing so much important health information, and cannot make an informed decision to have sex because they don't know about teen pregnancy rates and STI transmission rates. We can no longer turn away and pretend like teens aren't having sex because "by their 18th birthday, six in ten teen women and more than five in ten teen men have had sexual intercourse (Guttmacher Institute)." We need to stop and look around, realize that ignoring this epidemic isn't going to make it disappear. We have to stop this now before the time has run out, before there is nothing that we can do. We need mandatory sexual education courses in public schools between the fourth and twelfth grades.