IHS is fortunate to have multiple speakers, such as Planned Parenthood representatives, come into IHS health classrooms and present about a wide range of topics. One topic in particular has been a source of strong debate around the country: sex education. Due to strongly varying opinions, finding a curriculum that educates but does not offend has been a struggle that differs from state to state, and even district to district. With abstinence-based sex education dominating thousands of classrooms around the country, messages on safety, consent and contraception are being pushed back and ignored. When Planned Parenthood sent someone to talk to IHS about contraception, we were one of a few groups getting a “comprehensive” health education as described by the president of Advocates for Youth: information on both abstinence and contraception.
According to a report by the Guttmacher Institute, a not-for-profit organization that promotes reproductive health through birth control, abstinence is taught about 30 percent more than contraception. A report by the same group, completed March 1, 2016, has yielded similar, alarming results. New York State is one of a few states that don’t require sex education, and one of 13 that don’t require medical accuracy. In addition to that, some of the states that do have sex education have strict and limiting guidelines on what can and cannot be taught or discussed. Nineteen states mandate instruction on the importance of sexual activity only within marriage, and only 13 states require the discussion of sexual orientation. While this lack of important laws is definitely unacceptable, that doesn’t mean, for example, that many New York State schools don’t teach sex ed, or don’t teach it accurately. However, it does mean there is no legal incentive to educate properly, and without bias or religious overtones. The sex education guidelines in the United States are so inconsistent and opinionated that the disparity in well-rounded sex education high-school students receive is appalling.
Why does non-presumptive sex education matter? When curriculum is designed based solely on the narrow-sighted idea that every individual in the classroom will wait until marriage, they are making two assumptions: that students will abstain until marriage, and that they will get married at all. When states decide that abstinence is the only option that can be promoted, they are forgetting one, simple fact: according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, the average age for the loss of virginity is 17.1 (the age of an average IHS junior). If, by that point, teenagers haven’t learned what responsible sexual activity is, the results can be disastrous, including STDs, unwanted pregnancy, and rape. As John Oliver pointed out on his Last Week Tonight segment on sex education, when schools spend that much time teaching children and teens how to say “no,” they’re forgetting about what it means to say “yes.” Because adults are ignoring sex as an option, consent and other safety measures are not taught in the depth they should be. In a poll conducted by the Washington Post in 2015, 18 percent of college students think it’s consent as long as no one has said “no.” Even more disheartening, a massive 47 percent believed that someone is giving consent to further sexual activity if they remove their clothes. Education is an effective way to dispel biases and misconceptions based on lack of knowledge or understanding. Consent, according to Cornell’s Legal Information Institute, is a freely given agreement by a competent individual. A statement this ambiguous needs formal clarification in the classroom, before it becomes a real-life, consequential issue.
Sexual health is becoming less and less of a taboo topic thanks to an unprecedented access to media, but what we say about sex is still incomplete. Every teenager in the country deserves to know that he or she has options and personal choices to make. Schools should not help make those decisions for teens, but tell them what those options are and how to go about them safely. Too often health classes focus on what’s unhealthy and what warning signs are, but there are benefits in understanding what healthy relationships look like. Abstinence is not the choice most teenagers are making, but safety and consent could be, and those are the kinds of topics that should be mandatory.