I have moved all over the country and have never attended a school for more than two years. Now this does not make me an expert on America's sexual education classes, but it does mean that i have experienced my fair share of them. The classes that I attended ran the board from if we don't really talk about it you wont figure it out, to telling us absolutely everything, especially the parts we didn't want to hear about. And the one sad thing I found to be true in my experience, the school that avoided the subject the most, was the school with the most pregnancies. This doesn't mean that the whole school went out to have sex and get pregnant, just most of them.
In and article for MSNBC by Molly Masland, the problem becomes a little more clear "Sixty-six percent of American high school students have had sex by their senior year...According to the Centers for Disease Control and the Kaiser Family Foundation, approximately 65 percent of all sexually transmitted infections contracted by Americans this year will occur in people under 24. One in four new HIV infections occurs in people younger than 22." So where is the disconnect?
The schools tell us not to have sex, our parents tell us not to have sex, the media tells us to have sex, our friends, boyfriends, girlfriends, strangers on the street, all tell us to have sex. And I have to admit, I learned more about sex from the people telling me to have it than any where else. So if I'm getting the most information from those telling me its a good thing, whats to stop me?
I had one course at Lassiter High were I actually learned more about sex, I was already a senior in high school and didn't think that there was anything left for me to learn on this subject, I was proven wrong. The school hired someone form out side to come in and teach the course, and the first words out of her mouth shocked us all, " sex is the best experience you will ever have in you life, if you do it right." We couldn't believe the person who had come to tell us not to have sex was for it, before I had just kind of assumed the people teaching me sex ed had lived like nuns or something, this lady however, clearly hadn't. She talked about everything and by the end of the class even the people who were already having sex were reconsidering, it was the best sex ed class I have ever taken, yet many times during the class I found myself wishing that this knowledge had been given to me sooner, because you see the knowledge didn't lead me to wanting to be a freewheeling whore, it lead me to confidence. Confidence in an area and about a subject that I hadn't been confident before.
We have to watch out for who is giving information to our kids. When all they are hearing is the good wonderful side of sex then what is truly out there to stop them? And if they don't know how to have safe sex, than what prevents them from catching a decease, or getting pregnant. It has been said so many time it has become cliche, but still it is true, knowledge is power, and in this era, kids need all the power they can get to avoid the temptations surrounding them.
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