|
home > writing
> battalion articles
Schools must teach sex education
With the likelihood of Joycelyn Elders soon taking the helm of
the Health Department, Americans have a few new decisions to make
regarding sex education. College-age individuals should be particularly
interested because their children will be the first generation to
experience an established policy on how issues of sex are taught
in schools.
Basically, Elders is a hard-nosed, “tell it like it is”
person with a new agenda in mind to bring accelerating sex-related
health care problems – particularly those involving young
people – to a more manageable speed. It’s a fact that
children in our society are learning more and more about sex whether
their parents like it or not, and as a result teenage pregnancies
and sexually transmitted diseases are as rampant as ever.
A long time proponent of sex education in schools and planned parenthood,
Elders is fielding opposition for several reasons, including the
abortion issue and her notion of supplying condoms in schools. She
has been such an outspoken advocate of the idea she has been coined
the “condom queen” in response to her stance on making
prophylactics available in schools. This raises the question of
who determines what messages about sex are sent to young people.
Although it’s not difficult to understand the conservative
right’s motivation regarding parents as the sole sex educators,
the reasoning involved is unfortunately erroneous and outdated.
Some parents do an excellent job of informing their children on
the important emotional and physical aspects of sex, as well as
the possibility of treacherous consequences.
However, when education is left to parents, the child is forced
to adhere to a particular viewpoint that may be based primarily
on particular religious, cultural or psychological restraints. Due
to such factors, the general diversity of attitudes on sex in our
society is appalling, leading to false beliefs and dangerous practices.
Along with the idea of standardized sex education in schools follows
a lengthy trail of questions and trodden moralities. At some point
the government will have to determine what should be taught. Would
it be right to subject all states to Big Brother’s centralized,
federal lesson plan? Or should individual states decide what is
best for them, and allow Californian children to have a radically
different sex education than North Carolinians?
Bigger government is not the best answer to the country’s
sex problems, but because Americans will never be able to agree
on the ethics involved, schools should teach children the facts
of health and sex, and leave morality up to the individual –
or the parents.
Most of you out here already have a fairly clear-cut idea of what
you will teach your children about sex. And chances are that your
ideas about sex are somewhat more liberal than your parents’
because of social and generational factors if nothing else. This
also implies that your children’s attitudes may drift from
yours as well. The point is that principles regarding sex have loosened
steadily over time, and will likely continue to do so. The choice
becomes whether to send children out into the new century armed
with knowledge of what they may encounter, or helpless with the
archaic notion that “my child” will wait until she’s
married, or, “my son” would never sleep around. Although
it’s possible they may “never,” statistically
they will – by a landslide. Is it worth the risk?
Perhaps the most widely touted rationale for keeping sexual information
and certainly condoms out of schools is that by teaching students
about sex outside of morality and distributing protection, adults
are giving young people a positive signal to engage in sex. This
argument appears to have merit on the surface, but is really quite
flimsy.
Let’s assume an individual transfers from a private school
with high moral standards but no formal sex education to a public
school which freely teaches about sex and distributes condoms through
the nurse. Either this individual will continue to adhere to principle
and be unfazed by external stimuli, or decide, “Gee this sounds
like fun, and everyone’s doin’ it.”
In the first case, the person is comfortable with already imprinted
morality and is in control. In the second case, not only is the
student making his own decision, but apparently never connected
with the former school’s ethics to begin with. If the atmosphere
of sex education and condoms caused the student’s moral degradation,
what’s going to happen after graduation? Not only will the
person have no “morals” but no condoms either. On the
other hand, can children be kept safely in “private school”
morality until they’re either married or dead?
This issue of formally educating our young people on the topic of
sex is a loaded one. It would certainly be wonderful if all parents
all over this country would tell children exactly what they need
to know about health and sex. But they don’t, they just don’t.
Until a comprehensive, standardized sex education curriculum is
implemented in our schools, unwanted pregnancies and sexually transmitted
diseases will continue to become one of the largest healthcare problems
this country has ever faced.
|