It is no secret that high school age kids are having sex— and a lot of it, at that.
According to the Center for Disease Control, 47% of high school age students reported being sexually active in 2013, and of that, 34% had had intercourse in the three months prior to that study.
So, yes, nearly half of America’s youth are having sex in their adolescent years. Yet as of Jan. 1, 2015, only 22 states mandate that sexual education be taught in public schools.
That is a promising number, but, in all reality, we still could be doing way better to teach children the importance of relationships and safe sex, and eradicating abstinence-only programs would be a great first step.
Having an abstinence-based sexual education policy is near ancient. In today’s society, sex isn’t a taboo topic. In fact, it is hard to watch TV for an hour without seeing overly-sexualized cologne commercials, or something of the like.
Almost every movie in theaters has (to some extent) a sex scene. So, school administrators and politicians who think that turning their heads and not looking at the problem will make it disappear are further perpetuating the easily-solved issue at their feet.
Hoping that parents alone will inform their kids about the topic is also more or less futile.
Because, the fact of the matter is, not all kids and teenagers have a well-informed nurse for a mother like I did. It’s safe to say that it is not easy to go to your parents with questions like, “So what goes where?”
Yet, these questions could be safely asked and correctly answered in an environment where the kids are not afraid to ask them. Kids are learning what sex is earlier and earlier, whether their parents are teaching them or not.
So, it is up to school districts and their boards of education to institute a semester or even a year-long program to inform teenagers about sex and the dos and don’ts of the whole experience.
This idea could potentially solve a lot of issues our adolescents face today, like sexual abuse among peers, and also injuries or diseases contracted from the process due to misinformed ideas gotten from the Internet.
Nearly 10 million of the yearly STD average accounts for young people from the ages 15 to 24 years old. We could possibly see a significant decline in that number in the next few years if every state would institute a sexual education program. However, we have yet to see any big changes in the last few years.
But why stop there?
Anyone who has been to a high school in the last decade knows that almost everyone starts a sexually intimate relationship with one of his or her peers.
The relationship and dating culture in modern high schools is growing exponentially, and pretty much consumes every conversation in the halls and in the cafeteria. So, now the administrations across the country have an opportunity in front of them to correctly inform their students about healthy relationships and how to go about practicing healthy habits.
Relationships in high school can possibly teach you some of the most important lessons you will learn in your lifetime: respect, trust, loyalty, caring for another person, empathy and responsibility, to name a few.
So, why not capitalize on that and help guide students along the right path and teach them not only about sexual education, but also healthy relationships and sexual, physical and emotional abuse and how to avoid it?
The potential lessons on how young men shouldn’t objectify women, or about how young women shouldn’t see themselves as inferior to their male counterparts, or how different sexual orientations are okay, and if the feelings are there for certain students, that they should embrace them and learn to love them, could be the most important things the students learn in these classes.
These topics of discussion could help build a better and healthier generation for the future and ultimately build a better world.
