Sex Ed.

The bell rings and the students settle down, waiting impatiently for class to start. "This course," begins the quivering voice of the teacher, "will cover the topic of sex." Students giggle nervously around the room.

The question is no longer should sex education be taught, but rather how should it be taught. Over 93% of all public high schools currently offer courses on sexuality or HIV.(1) More than 510 junior or senior high schools have school-linked health clinics, and more than 300 schools make condoms available on campus. The question now is are these programs effective, and if not, how can we make them better?
Kids need the right information to help protect themselves. The US has more than double the teenage pregnancy rate of any western industrialized country, with more than a million teenagers becoming pregnant each year.(2) Teenagers have the highest rates of sexually transmitted diseases (STDs) of any age group, with one in four young people contracting an STD by the age of 21.(3) STDs, including HIV, can damage teenagers' health and reproductive ability. And there is still no cure for AIDS.

In today's permissive society teenagers are no longer expected to abstain from sex before marriage. The growing number of sexually active teens exposed to the danger of contracting AIDS has resulted in an evangelistic crusade by groups such as Planned Parenthood for "safe sex" through the use of condoms.

Sex education, which is sometimes called sexuality education or sex and relationships education, is the process of acquiring information and forming attitudes and beliefs about sex, sexual identity, relationships and intimacy. It is also about developing young people's skills so that they make informed choices about their behaviour, and feel confident and competent about acting on these choices.
Sex education seeks both to reduce the risks of potentially negative outcomes from sexual behaviour like unwanted or unplanned pregnancies and infection with... [continues]

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