Sex, maybe the mention of the topic alone, made you twitchy in your seat, maybe you were mildly uncomfortable by the fact: a 17yearold girl just yelled the word sex at you, but all of this trust me it’s precisely why I want to talk about the topic today. Why exactly is it such an awkward subject? Why do we feel the need to conveniently go to the bathroom when a sex scene pops up when we’re watching a movie with our parents? Why do we avoid saying the word all together, banging smashing boning screwing, nailing love making doing the deed, getting it on getting laid? Fourth base, hanky panky, shab, boing boing, I mean really making whoopy truly. Why are so many of us not taught earlier on what sex is and how to do it safely openly and without shame? I was not sat down given the birds of the bees talk, and maybe you could say that was a failure on my parents.
Part, sorry mom, but my public school, which is supposed to teach me, didn’t fair much better. As the 2’s hit movie mean girls put it don’t have sex or you will get pregnant and and die and in some places our reality is not that far off. I think government regulated sexual education on the state level is where we specifically need to focus to increase dialogue on safe sex without our public school teachers. Talking about these uncomfortable or awkward subjects, how can we ensure the safety is learned? Sex education in the united states is crucial to preventing harmful negative outcomes like sexually transmitted diseases and teen, pregnancy and truly abstinence.
Only education is not going to cut it because, let’s be honest here, teens are going to have sex anyway and they have a right to know what is going on with their bodies without shame, especially when it comes to more vulnerable groups like queer and lgbtq teenagers, Who already have stigma surrounding their own sexualities and identities, but lucy you may be asking what about the rights of parents and what their children learn. This question has come up a lot recently in the media, specifically in legislation throughout the us. Recently october of 2023 congress introduced what was named: the parents bill of rights act, it passed in the house and detailed a call for more control of the parents in their students, education, but truly at its core. A public school is a place for all and everyone, and when a parent enrolls their child in public school, there are some rights they simply have to give up like supervision over their child.
They give up their own protection of their child’s safety into the hands of the school, because the school is expected to keep their child safe, and this translates into curriculum as well. If, morally, I believe birds are evil and or spies working for the government and further than that, all children should be learning in schools that birds are evil. The school simply by nature of a public school cannot cater every students learning to my morals and beliefs.
Truly, it is a public school’s duty to display information to students as unbiased as possible and allow and encourage them to form their own opinions. But many parents still have an issue with what is taught because, yes, although the goal of a public school is to present facts, unbiasedly, some schools still fail, because the public school system is far from perfect and truly the most effective solution is avoiding your child running. In into the issues of the school system is to homeschool, especially if you have the resource to now.
One fact we can’t escape from that is in our modern society is that your children will learn about sex anyway, especially with unlimited access to the internet and social media that most children have. Nowadays, it is near impossible for them not to be exposed to this kind of information in some way, but truly one of the best ways we can ensure the future generation learns about it safely is through a controlled environment that has set standards for what they learn And how to learn it in a way that protects their safety, because, above all, sexed is about protecting the safety of children and teens. Protecting children and teens from sexual harm is just one of the benefits of teaching sex. Ed sexual education has been proven to lower the rates of teen pregnancy, sexually transmitted diseases and sexual abuse, and can increase rates of consent and conversations happening surrounding the topic of consent.
As you can see in this graph here from the pure research center, teen, birth rates have fallen dramatically since even just 2010. This is such a great sign to the betterment of our sexual education. In that area. As of 2018, we had as low as 174 % teen birth rates.
However, in other areas with our current sex education, we fall flat according to the cdc, as of 2018 15 to 24 year olds, account for half of all sexually transmitted infections in the united states and stds in general are on the rise, like this graph shows: 73 % from just 2014 to 2019 further than that because of shame and access to treatment, teens are much less likely to get treated for it or get tested in order to prevent spreading to future partners. Increasing the dialogue on sex in general can work to break down the barriers, have these conversations and then in turn allow more prevention, but, more importantly, access to prevention, buying, a box of condoms doesn’t have to be so awkward and uncomfortable if our society can simply be More willing to be open and honest about those subjects and with that starting with increasing dialogue in a controlled environment like the public school, could lead to positive growth over time. Increasing sex education can also increase conversations of consent and lower rates of sexual assault. This graph, here from the cdc, shows not only the higher rates of for sex with female students compared to male students, but also the increase from 2019 to 2021 11 % to 14 %.
This is the issue that needs fixing on top of this approximately 1. In three women and one in six, men have reported experiencing some form of sexual violence in their lifetime and even more shockingly, in this study they found 413 % of women that reported they had been raped, also reported. They first experienced that sexual assault under the age of 18.
This is precisely why we need to talk at length about the importance of consent in our schools. Teaching our youth. How to prevent sexual violence can be critical for the prevention of it into their adulthood as well.
Now, specifically, you may be wondering how kansas spares when it comes to sex education and their set curriculum standards. Ksde highlights sex education standards in their kansas model, curriculum standard for health education published in 2019 under family life relationships and human sexuality. Sex is mentioned in the middle school and high school level, including potential outcomes of sexual activity, laws associated with sexual behaviors and seeking reliable adult advice on relationships and sexual activity. I believe kansas, fair is a lot better than other states.
However, there are no mentions in the kansas curriculum for queer, teens, teen sexuality or gender identity. Now one important thing to mention when we talk about on a statebystate basis is the legal age of consent in those states and how we that will ultimately impact curriculum in kansas. The legal age of consent is 16, so, regardless, if you do not agree with what is happening, it is legal activity for teenagers 16 and over to consent in sexual activity.
Now, when I mention other states in their ages of consent, you may also be wondering how other states, throughout the us differ from kansas in their curriculum standards. I looked through a variety of different states and they all have wildly different ideals on how to go about teaching this subject. One state differing the most from kansas curriculum I found was florida in their state law.
They detail human sexuality and the teaching of it, including – and I quote, the importance of teaching abstinence from sexual activity outside of heterosexual monogamous marriage. Safety of our students, children and teens should be number one priority of sex education and, unfortunately, some abstinence. Only programs can lead to increased rates of misinformation, therefore, leading to potentially unsafe practices by teenagers. All in all state set curriculum standards and state legislation are the first place.
We need to look to increase dialogue on safety and safe sex in schools. Having those set standards in place can ensure our students are being taught safely and in a safe environment, and not only that, but we can further increase the dialogue and conversation on safe sex with students with state legislation the most crucial addendum. I believe that could be implemented into so many state standards for health.
Education is queer identity, gender identity, sexualities and safety. Specifically when it comes to queer teen sexual activity and relationships. If you feel like, we do not have comprehensive enough heterosexual, such education, we have little to none at all for queer, youth and queer sexual education.
According to a study done in the uk, lgbtq youth were more likely to have rates of depression, self harm, anxiety and substance misuse. This graph from the cdc shows how much higher the rates of force, sex and sexual violence are in lgbtq, students versus heterosexual students, the lgbtq students in blue and the street students represented in purple in the graph. These issues can be tied to ostracization and homophobia from their peers, and these problems are exactly why the dialogue surrounding inclusivity and queer identity needs to increase and in an environment we can control. That topic being talked about.
More is the public school queer, teens identities matter too, and the increasing of inclusivity could work very well to lower the rates of shame regarding their identities, because queer teens exist and are going to keep existing and just like all other teens are also going to engage In sexual activity, they need to be just as well protected, if not more when it comes to the topic of reducing harmful sexual behaviors. Opening up sex education for queer students could also lead to positive mental health effects on lgbtq teens. Increasing conversations on inclusivity is not only important for the lgbtq teens themselves, but also for their classmates and the people who interact with them every day, so we can reduce harmful rhetoric and behaviors towards those populations of students.
Furthermore, viewing sexed from a purely heterosexual lens is not accurate to the real world as it is 2024 and, and so many people are gay. According to the cdc survey conducted in 2021 about one in four teenagers identify with some sort of lgbtq label, it is simply the reality we live in and if you would like to refuse to believe queer teens exist in a small midwestern high school. You would simply be wrong with a capital w one fear some may have is that possibly teaching about sex education could in turn possibly make your child gay. But to that I say your child was probably gay anyway, and that’s not the school’s doing.
This graph here shows how many people, who turned gay from learning about gay people, which, as you can see, is none and how many people who did not turn gay from learning about gay people and also how many people were already gay. Lgbtq teens deserve and need comprehensive sex education just the same as heterosexual teenagers. Overall, all teens deserve comprehensive sex education not only for their safety and to protect against harmful negative impacts on their health or the health of others, but also for the social and mental aspect, because as humans we deserve to discuss topics on our bodies and sexual activity. Without shame, because also the legal age of consent in many states is 16, and although you would like to pretend they’re not doing it, teens are going to have sex anyway, and they have a right to be educated on that topic.
Emphasis in sex education and open dialogue on sex in general, with teens can lead to positive outcomes like lower rates in teen, pregnancy and sexually transmitted diseases. Overall, we need to combat negative legislation against sex education and push for increase in the united states, because being educated is cool and ultimately can only lead to positive effects on the safety and intelligence of our future generations. Thank you.
