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As a living human being, sex is a big part of all of our lives. It is simply a part of human nature. It fascinates and intrigues our minds just because of the fact it is wired into our brains as a living, breathing human. Saying that, when should the topic of sex and everything else that comes with that (hormones, puberty, etc.) be introduced in schools and more importantly, be implanted into our children's brains? Sex education is the instruction of issues presenting to human sexuality, containing emotional relations and responsibilities, human sexual organs and anatomy, sexual activity, sexual reproduction, age of consent, reproductive health, safe sex, birth control, sexual abstinence, etc.
Awkward as it may be, sex education is a parent's and teacher’s responsibility.
By boosting and enhancing what our children learns in school, you can set the child up for a lifetime of healthy mental and physical sexuality. Sex education is only medically accurate in thirteen U.S.
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states, the rest of what our children learn is up to our own children’s knowledge of it all: playground theories and simply interpretation. Additionally, only twenty five out of fifty states in the United States have a mandatory plan or discipline for sex education in schools. Sex education should be taught in all schools across America with certain standards and requirements that are placed to protect students’ life skills specifically going into their teen and adulthood stages. Without proper knowledge of the topic of sex, children will be lost throughout the transition from childhood to adulthood in many different ways.
Introducing the topic of sex education may be a very scary moment in any parent’s life.
Letting our children learn what will become of their bodies in the future and them understanding is a vital point in all of our development. Growing up is a tricky and relatively fast period of time. We go from being little kids that wish we could fly to Neverland, to growing into sassy teenagers that hide in our rooms all day in only 2-6 years. This happens because of the dreadful “puberty”. Puberty is a process that goes on for several years. It is the name of the period of time where your body goes through changes forming you from a kid into an adult. Genetically, children are already wired to start having hormones that involve sexual emotions and behavior naturally. So already they sort of know what’s coming.
But, nowadays kids are exposed to sex via social media, television, and all over the internet by the time they start going through the process of puberty. It is so important to show our kids what is going to happen to their bodies (in an appropriate way) at an early age so they don’t become afraid or nervous. The last thing we want is for our children to feel unsafe or nervous to ask questions about their ever changing bodies as they start to develop. To avoid this, sex education comes into play. Since during puberty, your body changes faster than any other time in your life, it is so important to inform our children about what is going to happen to their bodies.
Usually puberty begins to take force on girls from ages 7-14, and for boys from ages 8-16. Not only does your body change during this time but also your mental and personality change as well. During puberty, our children might feel confused or have strong emotions that they’ve never had before. They start having mood swings, like you might remember yourself. You might feel way overly sensitive or become very upset easily. They obviously will feel a little anxious about what is happening inside and outside of their bodies. Sometimes it could be really hard to deal with all these new emotions. Sex education in this case is very important because they might feel nervous to ask questions, but it’s overly important for them to know what is going on to ease their minds. Feeling informed about what is going on will make our children feel safe and normal. Teaching our children whether it’s in school or at home is critical.
Growing up, we have all heard “hoo ha”, “cha cha”, “weenie”, in replace of the actual terms of human genitalia. In most schools, they have to be medically accurate meaning they have to use the actual terms associated to our private parts. So this might be an unheard of words or it also might be a big uncomfortable at first especially because those words are not usually openly talked about on a regular basis. In the United States there isn’t an in place curriculum on what to teach the kids about sex, when to teach them, or who gets taught what. So what kids learn and when is solely based on where you live and what school you go to. “Michigan is one of several US states that permit parents to attend sex ed classes if they want to vet what their kids are being taught. In Dreger's case, she went in expecting the worst—and was not disappointed. As the instructors alternately slut-shamed sexually active girls and warned of dire consequences for boys, she live-tweeted her shock and horror. 'You'll find a good girl. If you find one that says 'no,' that's the one you want.' HE ACTUALLY JUST SAID THAT,' Dreger wrote about a male teacher's message to the class. 'I can't stand this…The whole lesson here is 'sex is part of a terrible lifestyle.' Drugs, unemployment, failure to finish school—sex is part of the disaster,' Dreger tweeted from inside her son's East Lansing classroom.” (Emilio Santoyo: Only 13 States Require Sex Ed to Be Medically Accurate).
By law only twenty five states require some kind of sex ed to be taught, the rest has the option to teach it or not. Some schools do it right and get the right points across, and some just flat out fail at doing what is needed for the kids. We need to set up a safe place for students to ask questions and have a serious conversations about what sex is, what the different parts are, what happens during puberty, what are the consequences of having sex, etc. Stating their feelings openly and honestly in a comfortable place to do so is so super essential. Reminding our children that we expect him or her to take sex education and all the topics and responsibilities within that seriously. “The share of schools providing sexual health education declined between 2000 and 2014, across topics ranging from puberty and abstinence to how to use a condom.” (Guttmacher Institute: American Adolescents’ Sources of Sexual Health Information). Teaching sex education is a tough and sticky situation because teaching it “right” is different to different states, districts, teachers, students, and parents.
“Fanny Wright (1795–1852), a brilliant Scottish heiress and Owen's publishing colleague, became the first woman to address American audiences about sexuality. Wright unabashedly embraced sexual pleasure as 'the best source of human happiness' and advocated free physiology lessons for all workers, especially women. She affirmed women's desires, insisted on the necessity of consent, and—most explosively—advocated interracial sex. With visionary optimism, Wright believed that consensual interracial sex would purge the society of racism. Coupled with her critiques of the marriage relation, such ideas enraged conservatives and alienated erstwhile financial supporters. Opponents of women's sexual autonomy used Wright's name as a slur to dissuade other women from speaking in public. Decades later, even women whose ideas about sex hardly resembled hers earned reputations as 'Fanny Wrightists,' an association that continued to carry severe social consequences. Although Wright mainly contributed to sex education as a speaker, her controversial messages touched important literary figures: Walt Whitman, among others, recalled the impact of her oratory.” (Haynes, April Rose. 'Sex Education').
Being a teenager is a rough time for kids. They are treated like children but supposed to act like an adult. Sex education and teenage pregnancies are topics deeply intertwined with each other. Sex education, the incline of teenage pregnancy decreases down.Teenagers who are unfamiliar and uneducated on the consequences of sexual activity tend to find themselves in an unpromising situation, like having to raise a child when they are just becoming an adult themselves. Three in ten teen American girls will get pregnant at least once before age twenty. That's nearly 750,000 teen pregnancies every single year. That is CRAZY. Parenthood is also the leading reason that teenage girls drop out of school. More than 50% of teenage mothers never graduate from high school or get a GED. There are two forms of nationally used sex education premises: abstinence only or comprehensive. Basically both are effective, in different ways.
Abstinence only is telling the child that abstinence from sex is most important and you should not do it until marriage, while the other shows all the different types of contraception to prevent pregnancy and promote safe sex. The University of Georgia researchers analyzed data changes in teen pregnancies by each state in America, and found that as states increased their emphasis on abstinence only sex education, teen pregnancy rates increased. Teenagers in American states that taught about all contraceptive methods had a lot much lower rates of teenage pregnancy. (Teen Pregnancies Fall But School Sex Ed Doesn't Work. Huh?” Psychology Today, Sussex Publishers).
“Abstinence only sex education is ineffective in preventing teen pregnancy and may actually contribute to it.” (America's Sex Education: How We Are Failing Our Students: University of Georgia). Most teenage pregnancies happen due to a lack of the learning and knowledge of different types and safe contraceptives. It was reported that teenagers who received comprehensive sex education, showed sixty percent less risk of getting pregnant in teenage years. Teenage pregnancy can cause considerable damage to the woman’s reproductive system as well. Diseases such as anaemia and STD’s can act as a permanent problem in some scenarios. This is because a teenager in this time of development is not supposed to have yet completed her own period of time of growth. This is why sex education is very important once our children start feeling the urge or starting to be curious of the topic of sex. Being informed of sex and how it all works, is so important for our future generations to feel comfortable and know all consequences when it comes to sex especially at such a young age.
We all know what leaves after your “first time”, that forever beloved word and ideology called “your virginity”. When you search “virgin” on Google, the results that come up right away are; “a person who has not yet had sexual intercourse,” “a person who is inexperienced in a usually specified sphere of activity,” “an unmarried woman devoted to religion,” “an absolutely chaste young woman,” and “an unmarried girl or woman.” Virginity is simply just an idea, and it means different things to different people. It’s definition is not set in stone. The field of ideas surrounding virginity means that there is a lot of misinformation out there on the internet and simply in peers about what virginity is, and who is or is not a virgin. To our children this also could come across in a way that is a bit confusing as to every other topic of sex education.
To our kids, it is crucial to try to introduce this topic, along with sex, to our kids slowly over time, and in an appropriate way they will remember and interpret later. Sex is important, it’s a special life experience that your tend to never forget, but nothing about you is inherently changing as a result of it, despite society’s tendency to make you think that but in all reality it doesn’t change a thing about your appearance. It’s all in your head. Choosing to have sex for the first time is a huge decision and very understandably a huge deal to you. The whole “waiting until marriage” ideology is used to infer that if a woman has sex she has become impure and her value has declined dramatically just because she made the decision (her own self) to have sex. In the past, some think that virginity is thought of as purity. Basically, “you’re pure and have value in your life because you’ve never had sex”. There’s no way to change how society views it now and in the past, but we do need to accept that the concept of virginity is nothing more than a social construct with an unclear definition.
So again, without proper knowledge of the topic of sex, children will be lost throughout the transition from childhood to adulthood in many different ways. Kids are already lost enough mentally going through all these changes. Sex education should be taught in all public and private schools across America with different standards and requirements that are placed to protect students’ life skills specifically going into their teen and adulthood stages. This is so vital and important in the process of growing into an adult. Sex education informs children of important body changes, how sex works, how body parts react, sexual behavior throughout life, personal skills, sexual health, human development, etc. Not showing kids and involving them in these important conversations, may be dangerous to them as they develop. The thoughts they may have, the questions they may have, they should have a safe place to get those questions answered in an age appropriate way by also being medically accurate. Some forms of sex education is part of the curriculum at many schools, it remains a controversial issue in several states and even countries, especially with concern to the age at which children should start placing such education in their minds, the amount of detail, and topics dealing with human sexuality and behavior.
Sex Education And Human Sexuality. (2022, Jun 06). Retrieved from https://studymoose.com/sex-education-and-human-sexuality-essay
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