We can all remember the sense of dread we had upon beginning the “Family Life Education” units during health and biology classes. Besides the hot and stuffy classrooms, we dealt with the outdated movies (complete with atrocious acting)and, of course, the incessant giggling. However, there are bigger problems with sex-education in public schools than it being terrifyingly awkward.
Despite being labeled as “education,” FLE lacks coverage of many aspects of sex and STDs that aren’t covered in public schools or are covered poorly, which leads to common misconceptions about sex.
There are very important concepts pertaining to sex that are never mentioned, glazed over or taught negatively.
Some of them include the fundamental need for consent and what it looks like, sex and STDs in non-heterosexual sex and sexual orientation.
This tendency harms and limits the education of LGBTQIA+ students. Teachers make an effort to be politically correct, but as a result, often skip important concepts that are vital to the education of LGBTQIA+ students. Not to mention information covered in such courses, including contraception, abstinence and various STDs, is often oversimplified.
A study done by the Guttmacher Institute found that only 13 states require medically accurate information and only 8 states require that the information be unbiased against any race, sex, or ethnicity; both Virginia’s and D.C.’s sex-education curriculums fall short of these essential requirements.
The study also found that only 9 states (not including Virginia or D.C.) even discuss sexual orientation, and three of those states (Alabama, South Carolina, and Texas) discuss them in a negative manner.
Public schools also like to put an unfavorable spin on sex in an attempt to steer teenagers away from having sex, but end up making the subject uncomfortable and discouraging people from having necessary conversations about it.
One required movie in health class right here at Marshall showed the dangers of having sex through a skit where teenagers entered a raffle (a metaphor for sex) and won “prizes.”
However, in the video, there were no positive results of having sex depicted—only a cheesy narrator announcing, “You’ve won gonorrhea!” or “You’ve received an unplanned child!” at the various kids who participated in the sex-raffle.
Sex-ed in public schools, rather than teaching students how to make responsible and well thought-out decisions to prevent pregnancy and STDs, is usually a month-long session designed to scare or shame teenagers away from having sex at all.
Of course, unprotected and uninformed sex can be dangerous and a risk to one’s health.
But by focusing so much on the negative consequences, schools aren’t teaching students to think critically or independently.
Conversations regarding the importance of consent and awareness are vastly more effective than outdated and cheesy videos that no one even takes seriously.
Incidentally, states that try to scare teenagers away from sex using restrictive abstinence-only curricula, like Mississippi and New Mexico, actually have the highest STD and teenage pregnancy rates, according to researchers at the University of Washington in Seattle.
Public schools are accomplishing the exact opposite of what they intended by limiting teens’ education and not providing a legitimate foundation for knowledge about sex.
In fact, if the public school system wants to actually decrease teenage pregnancy and STDs, it should implement a more flexible and nontraditional curriculum, with more information about contraceptives designed to accommodate safe sex, than a curriculum focused on having no sex at all, according to a study done by the Journal of Adolescent Health.
As youtuber and sex-educator Laci Green puts it, “This [type of curriculum] isn’t education, this is anti-sex propaganda.”