Comprehensive Sex Ed Not Enough

Comprehensive Sex Ed in Public Schools:
Still Not What It Should Be

More issues exist within the realm of sex education in American public schools than those that the highly visible debate over abstinence-only vs. comprehensive sex education highlights. Engrossed in the worthy mission to convince skeptical abstinence-only supporters that comprehensive sex ed is invaluable to the health of the nation’s young adults, comprehensive sex ed advocates have failed to adequately address another issue: that our current comprehensive education often fails to include relevant topics like homosexuality, masturbation, or sexual pleasure, among many others. Since their position is already seen as radical to conservatives, comprehensive sex ed supporters may be reluctant to voice concerns beyond their primary concern, which is the need for contraceptive education. However, comprehensive sex ed must become even more inclusive by introducing other valid topics in order not to create damage of its own: increased homophobia, sexism, and lasting fears of sex.

The existing curriculum for sex ed in public schools is in need of across-the-board reform. As it stands, comprehensive sex ed is vague and lacks a well-rounded, unbiased representation of adult sexualities, sex, and the issues that arise upon choosing to partake in sexual activities. Teachers should primarily encourage abstinence, as it is the only way to guarantee safety from disease and unwanted pregnancy. But methods for safer sex should definitely be required in any sexual education curriculum. In addition, however, I propose that schools remove sex from the negative context in which it always appears. Instead, sex should be portrayed realistically by making several perspectives available to represent adult sexuality fairly and objectively to those soon entering adulthood.

Before continuing, I must assert that I cannot test my theory that adding unconventional curriculum to comprehensive sex ed will benefit students more than current comprehensive sex ed and abstinence-only education. Jonathon Swift articulates my feelings regarding effective sex education in “A Modest Proposal” when he stated, “under the present state of affairs, [it] is utterly impossible by all the methods hitherto proposed” (Swift, 212). Until we can convince legislators that abstinence-only programs are solely responsible for our skyrocketing pregnancy rates and overall ineffectiveness in protecting our youth, I cannot realistically hope to test my hypothesis that incorporating currently ignored, new aspects of sexuality would actually deter pregnancy and STD rates while lowering the amount of sexually active teens—in effect, reaping the rewards of both abstinence and comprehensive sex ed. Later I will speculate on further possible benefits.

While all federally funded programs are mandated to teach that “sexual activity outside of marriage may have harmful psychological and physical effects,” and they are not allowed to provide any information on contraception except to stress its ineffectiveness, as the National Family Planning and Reproductive Health Association points out, schools continue to operate their sex ed programs on these scientifically proven false premises (web). Because America continues to ignore such definitive studies and evidence merely supporting the effectiveness of contraceptives, some may think it pointless to currently pursue further expansion of sex ed when we have not yet convinced all schools to teach about contraception. I disagree. While it will be a long, frustrating fight, I hope that one day it will grant this extensive program a chance to help young adults make responsible, realistic sexual decisions. As for now, many Americans are still uncertain about the most basic comprehensive sex ed material, and for these people I must continually emphasize contraceptive education’s pertinence.

Kids learn about sex through school, friends, occasionally family, and especially the media. Sex is an inevitable aspect of any culture, but in American culture in particular, television, movies, magazines, and internet sites allow provocative material to seep through the metaphorical blindfold that parents like to tie around their children’s eyes. One thing is certain about kids in the U.S.: sex is shoved in their faces day after day, and kids are continually exposed to sex without a context that allows them to comprehend it fully and responsibly. The media is a powerful and influential source, and its messages often reflect other sexuality issues, as well. Heterosexual standards, for example, are largely reflected by the media. This can reinforce fear or shame among homosexual or bisexual teenagers, as well as contribute to homophobic attitudes among some heterosexual teens.

Because the media glamorizes and seemingly endorses sex, teens may also feel pressure to conform and partake in sexual activities. Planned Parenthood discovered that the Alan Guttmacher Institute, as of 2003, found that 35% of American schools only teach abstinence (web). This confuses sexual issues even more for these American teens, who are taught that any form of premarital sex is wrong. It is easy for kids to identify cultural norms represented in various forms of Western media, and confusing when they seem to contradict their education.

Though my argument is primarily for an all-encompassing sexual education that would remove premarital sex from a strictly negative light, I recognize the ill-effects sex can have on teens. It is no exaggeration that sexually active teens risk their health, future career aspirations, and financial stability. Many advocate abstinence as the only moral option to be taught to teens because of all that is on the line. I completely agree that abstinence is the only way to avoid these life-altering risks. Even when used properly, condoms still have a two-percent failure rate, as emphasized by Planned Parenthood (web). An insert straight from a Durex condom box reads, “No method of contraception can provide 100% protection against pregnancy or the transmission of HIV and sexually transmitted infections.” Refraining from sex is undoubtedly the smartest choice for high school students, as long as they are properly informed about safe sexual procedures for an unplanned sexual encounter. Likewise, it is the moral responsibility of the schools to advise strongly against teen sex before engaging in any further discussion regarding sexual topics.

Most conservatives support abstinence-only education because they believe it will safeguard against teen sex, and therefore protect their children from the dangers of sex. Though abstinence-only supporters firmly believe that their program temporarily delays and decreases sexual activity among teens, after hours and weeks of searching, I could not find one study maintaining this myth. Even if these claims were true, abstinence-only education has never completely extinguished premarital sexual activity. There will always be the kids who do what they want, or who get swept up in their hormones, no matter what. The question people must ask themselves is, do these teens deserve information on how to protect themselves, or shall we vengefully punish them with the serious consequences of unsafe sex, in hopes of scaring others from following suit? Parents must recognize that there is a strong possibility that their own teenage daughters and sons are sexually active, and one hopes that this realization will spark sympathy for this plight to inform and protect American adolescents from the dangers of unprotected sex.

Though European teens have just as much sex as American teens, Europe’s teen pregnancy rate is a quarter of ours: the highest in the world, reports the highly prestigious Alan Guttmacher Institute (web). This variation is likely so drastic because their sex ed programs do not censor out accurate information about contraception, as many of ours do. In “No Sex-Education: From ‘Chastity’ to ‘Abstinence,’” Judith Levine reports a high correlation between outrageously low pregnancy rates and providing easily accessible contraception. The Netherlands do not teach abstinence at all and instead stress safer sex for teens by providing free contraception through the national health care system; vending machines selling condoms are prevalent throughout Holland for those who would rather be more discreet (Levine, 450). Consequently, the Netherlands’ pregnancy rates are 10 times less than ours, and the lowest in the world, asserts Planned Parenthood (web).

As these other countries demonstrate, minimizing resources on contraceptives is not an effective preventative measure to help teens suppress their sexual desires. Instead, this increases the odds of teen pregnancy and sexually transmitted infection by leaving teens uninformed about the importance and proper use of contraception if and when they do choose to have sex. Because of the widely recognized, steady trend towards postponing marriage noted by the organization Religious Tolerance, premarital sex is hardly an issue confined to high school students; a thorough overview of sexual health, well-being, and acceptance can continue to act as a life-long knowledge base even for those who wait to marry for sex (web). After all, most people succumb to their sexual desires at some point in their lives.

Once hormones start kicking in during early adolescence, the inherent sexual desire kids begin to experience provokes a natural sense of curiosity and sex drive. Though statistics vary between studies and surveys, the overall message is clear: most teens obviously act upon these urges. For instance, the world’s largest non-for-profit sexual health agency, Planned Parenthood, reports that 60% of all U.S. high school seniors have had sexual intercourse (web). Gary F. Kelly, author of the textbook Sexuality Today, reports that 80% of Americans now have sex before age twenty (Kelly, 168). In 1998, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention also quoted a figure of 42.5% when referring to tenth graders who have lost their virginity (web).

These numbers indicate the need to implement a more effective sex ed program that both decreases the number of sexually active teens as well as provides those who are already sexually active with information on proper protection. By incorporating the two current teaching methods—each having their own distinct benefits—with new, avant-garde material intended to declassify sexual desire as taboo and reduce both sexism and homophobia, American sex ed could have a chance at accomplishing an unprecedented improvement in health, social, and intrapersonal affairs.

Traditional, religious parents would likely have the hardest time accepting the introduction of certain proposed elements into their children’s education, such as homosexuality and referring to sex as a natural source of pleasure in a loving adult relationship, rather than for purely reproductive purposes. In fact, much of the information I recommend be included to constitute thorough sex education goes against many religious teachings. Kelly points out that homosexual sex (and consequently homosexuality as an acceptable sexual orientation), premarital sex, and birth control has often been looked down upon by many religions because of the prevailing theological belief that sex for pleasure, and without intention of reproduction, is sinful (Kelly, 379). Kelly goes into further detail about different major worldwide religious groups with great influential power, like the Roman Catholics, Judeo-Christians, and fundamentalist Muslims, specifically and strongly opposing birth control and abortion for the same reason (Kelly, 213, 310).

Masturbation is also a sin in many religions, especially those with ascetic foundations. Kelly defines asceticism as “characterized by the teaching that denial of sexual pleasure helps one be closer to spiritual needs and God, and it is part of the celibate lifestyle expected of some priests, nuns, and monks” (Kelly, 213). Attitudes guided by asceticism can help explain why masturbation has been negatively labeled “onanism,” after the Biblical character Onan whom God struck dead for his sin of “spilling his seed” (Kelly, 350). Adding even more religiously controversial topics beyond basic contraceptive information to public school sex ed programs, like those just discussed, gives conservative parents even stronger reason to shun comprehensive sex ed vehemently on religious grounds.

Much of the resistance to comprehensive sex education is based on religious beliefs of individuals, but public schools remain under government control. Because, sadly, it is increasingly more difficult to distinguish between religious, educational, and government issues these days, it is important to remember that our country was founded on the concept that church and state must remain separate entities. The religious ideals of some should not dictate the quality and amount of information available to atheists, agnostics, and students of different faiths. It is ironic how schools can cite religious reasons for failing to educate teens responsibly about sexuality issues, while most continue to teach the anti-religious concept of evolution. To understand fully the extent to which religiously controversial information is ignored and censored by the United States government, I looked to a subdivision of the Association of Reproductive Health Professionals called “Preserving Core Values in Science.”

This organization consists of scientists intent on illuminating conservative interference with public health and research. P.C.V.S. called upon James Wagoner, president of the non-for-profit adolescent health organization called Advocates For Youth, to articulate their feelings: “For twenty years, it was about health and science, and now we have a political ideological approach. Never have we experienced a climate of intimidation and censorship as we do now” (web). P.C.V.S.’s website also provided disturbing evidence documented by Science magazine and The New York Times that scientists were ordered to remove the following words and phrases from their grant application abstracts before they’d even be considered: “gay, homosexual, men who have sex with men, needle exchange, abortion, condom effectiveness, and commercial sex workers,” quoted The New York Times’ April 2003 edition (web). These AIDS and STD researchers were warned that they were under special scrutiny because of the politically controversial nature of the subjects they wished to study (same web). These scientists seek information that could help save millions of lives. So it is alarming that the American government is censoring themselves from the relevant language necessary for these scientists to convey their proposals clearly. Government censorship, on the basis that religious people may be offended by such language, is absolutely unacceptable.

It is equally irresponsible for schools to cover such an important, relevant topic as sex while knowingly omitting life-saving information for an inevitable sexually active student population. Even religious parents should recognize that perhaps having their children learn about and even participate in masturbatory practices or protected oral sex, would be preferable to dealing with a pregnant fourteen year-old daughter who has to decide between abortion, which is another culturally denounced practice; the emotional grief of bearing a child only to give it up for adoption; or accepting motherhood and a life with confined opportunities.

The reality is that most people do not practice abstinence until marriage. As Planned Parenthood and Levine point out, people with intentions to remain celibate often end up have unplanned intercourse (Levine, 451). Among this population, teens whose schools focused only on abstinence are unprepared and unknowledgeable about protection from disease and pregnancy. They are the tragic victims of sexual education censorship, because many people who end up contributing to teen pregnancy and HIV infection statistics were robbed of knowledge that could have prevented those occurrences. It is unfair to subject these teens, many who are unreligious, to unnecessary risk by supporting their ignorance based on faith-driven dogma.

The negative portrayal of premarital sex in both abstinence-only ed as well as in most of comprehensive sex ed is also troublesome. Usually, teachers go for the scare tactic to prevent kids from having sex, even when teaching about contraception’s benefits. But the teens who decide they still want to have safe sex hear little or no support for the idea that sex can be a positive enhancement in a loving relationship between two people, married or not. Though the fright tactic may seem to have pure intentions, there are consequences.

The depiction of sex as a marital affair likely contributes to emotionally damaging name-calling of sexually active girls. Though Kelly cited evidence showing that sexually active adolescents over the age of fifteen actually show higher self-esteem than their celibate peers, he also noted that girls are more likely to experience negative reactions to sex (Kelly, 168). Negative emotional responses of sex on teen girls can be accredited to feelings of being used, rejected, or guilt, but much of it can also come from peers viciously labeling sexually experienced girls as sluts, whores, or hoes. Many emotionally pained girls never even consider going to a school counselor or psychologist because of the shame associated with teen girls partaking in premarital sex. Perhaps the most damaging aspect of teen sex’s negative stigma is that girls may not visit a gynecologist upon having their first sexual intercourse. Fear of being found out by others is a tragic reason for girls to sacrifice proper health care.

“Doing Desire: Adolescent Girls’ Struggles for/with Sexuality,” Deborah L. Tolman’s collection of 400 girls’ narratives on sexuality, romance, contraception, and pregnancy, showed that the girls rarely referred to or even seemed to recognize their own desire for sexual pleasure (Tolman, 88). Tolman logically concludes that girls are taught by society to suppress their own desires while simultaneously being responsible for controlling boys’ sexual desires (Tolman, 88). One can only imagine the duress this expectation must place on teen girls, and the shame it must cause girls who do not follow this sexist double standard regarding teenage sexual feelings and behavior.

Tolman also put forth an interesting perspective on the adverse effect this could have on girls who do follow this cultural script: “Although disciplining their bodies and curbing their desire is a very logical and understandable way to stay physically, socially, and emotionally safe, it also heightens the chance that girls and women may lose track of the fact that an inequitable social system, and not a necessary situation, renders women’s sexual desire as a source of danger, rather than one of pleasure and power in their lives” (Tolman, 97).

Kelly wrote that women are more likely than men to develop sexual desire dysfunctions like Sexual Aversion Disorder, characterized by fear and avoidance of sex, or Hypoactive Sexual Desire Disorder, characterized by little or no arousal or sexual interest; Kelly speculates that their causes can include a failure of desire to form during adolescence, and rigid, religious, inhibiting, or punitive upbringings (Kelly, 539, 540). Fulfilled expectations for girls to deny their premarital sexual urges, then, can logically result in sexual afflictions later in life.

Even though sexually active teen boys are generally admired by their peers rather than ostracized, the “no sex before marriage” concept is still at work in a different way. Teen boys may come to think that sex, for them, must only be about pleasure if all they are taught is that sex is only rewarding in marriage, but their experiences prove otherwise. If premarital sex is devalued and never depicted as an act of love and affection, they may begin to see sex as a rebellious game. Rather than viewing sex as an intimate connection between two people, sexually active boys may come to objectify women through casual sex. Kelly quotes same-sex friends as being the primary source of sexual information for adolescents (Kelly, 169). So when boys brag to ‘the guys’ about scoring bitches and sluts, these boys contribute to the spread of sexist attitudes surrounding the acceptability of promiscuity among men but not among women.

Government-sanctioned sex education also discriminates against lesbians and gays. With gay marriage quickly being outlawed, students are, in essence, taught to believe that homosexuals can never have moral sexual relations if the only proper context for sex is within marriage. According to a survey conducted by Gay, Lesbian, and Straight Education Network in 1998, an alarming 48% of students ages 16-18 are prejudiced against gay people (web). If sex ed included explicit information on the specifics of safe lesbian and gay sexual expression in addition to the mechanics of heterosexual sex, rather than a vague brush-over about sexual orientation, I believe that the prejudiced perception of homosexuality as disgusting and abnormal would dissipate over time.

Educating students about the benefits of masturbation, the use of sex toys, manual genital manipulation, and even oral sex would be a wonderful supplement to teaching abstinence for safety’s sake within comprehensive sex education. One in five virgin boys report having been manually or orally stimulated by a girl (Kelly, 168). With further investigation, we might find that these boys consciously choose these sexual activities over riskier intercourse. By offering previously unavailable sexual alternatives to premarital intercourse and outlets for built-up sexual urges, the percentage of teens choosing to have penile-vaginal intercourse could drastically decline. These substitutions for conventional sex could reduce teen pregnancy rates phenomenally. After a few generations, we may even shed the negative stigma surrounding what had been called “unnatural” sexual acts, and allow teens to partake in the aforementioned sexual practices in a socially acceptable context.

Current comprehensive sexual education programs ignore crucial issues important to teens. By supporting comprehensive sex ed as it is, one merely concedes to the illogical conservative agenda that holding back precious information regarding sexual health will somehow improve our pathetic pregnancy and STD rates among teens. Well, it hasn’t. Unfortunately, our comprehensive sex ed programs haven’t even been doing the job. But leaving teens in the dark about sexuality issues will not prevent them all, or even most, from losing their virginity before marriage. A lack of information on how to physically, emotionally, and mentally deal with sex and sexuality only endangers them further, and forcing religious ideals upon our nation’s youth can promote unintentional sexism and homophobia. We must find a way to reduce pregnancy and STD infections among teenagers while lowering the number of sexually active teens, all the while putting a halt to biased, fear-centered sex ed in American public schools.

Some may call me hypocritical for preaching ideals when I have come out so strongly against those of the conservatives and religious. But the difference between my dream for a non-discriminatory, functional comprehensive sexual education curriculum to be spread throughout the United States, and the dream that all people will wait until marriage for sex and only perform traditional, heterosexual intercourse once married, is that my dreams have not yet been proven unworkable. But until everyone takes responsibility for enlightening other Americans about the need for fair, useful sex education, we’ll never have the chance to see what benefits my proposal could truly yield.