Sexual Education - A blunt, inapropriately opinionated paper.

Sex – a simple, innocent, three-letter word that can both be an essential practice in life and have a connotation that causes the snickering heard in the back of a school bus. Students may moan at the awkward situation a course in sexual education may force them to be placed in, but it is necessary class for them to take. I don’t believe our school has the right idea of distributing the information sex ed. is meant to, but there could be easy changes that help lower the number of pregnancies within our schools and to stop scaring young people from exploring the idea of their sexuality before they take the leap and become victims of exactly what they were taught to avoid.
Students in Cedar Springs High School take a general class on sexual education, but the focus is on abstinence and the dangers of sexually transmitted diseases – two very important topics, of course – which are hit head-on, are the focal point within the whole course. The students are told more or less to keep their clothes on or they will become infected or impregnated, and there is no way of stopping it unless they are willing to stay ‘pure’ for the person they are to marry; which, of course, is not entirely true. First of all, I was unaware that the use of the word ‘God’ was banned from such classes. Not that I was offended by the beliefs of those around me, but I don’t understand why a teacher or a hired spokesperson would bring a higher power into the choices a teen makes outside of a sermon. Second, fear is a wonderful object to use over people who have done wrong to stop them from making the same mistakes, but why scare children from something so natural? Students should be aware of the general information about both their bodies and other’s and not having to figure it out completely all on their own; there is always possibility of a fiasco if they are uneducated.
Upon curiosity and my commitment to the topic, I was forced to distribute a survey in which students of Cedar Springs High School told me what personal beliefs they had were tied to the sexual education class that was required. I had many mixed reviews – one person, who I did not see, tore up the survey and I was unable to get out another in time so that I have uneven numbers and I sadly cannot give percentages – including insightful ideas, profane language, and inappropriate, childish words scribbled in large letters in my “any additional comments” portion. This shows me that they may either be immature by nature or ignorant of the topic in question. An overwhelming majority of the students said that sexual education is extremely important, but not many told why. Students said that sexually transmitted diseases, abstinence, and the reproductive system were the main topics taught in the class, but they said that only what they know about STDs would be important later. Many said that they would have liked to learn about what would happen if they were to get pregnant or what they could do to practice safe sex. But, even the students who said they’d like to know how to practice safe sex did not say that ‘use of contraception’ would be important in their future. I see this as a problem, unless every single student who took the survey happened to be Catholic.
I don’t believe that schools should start teaching children about sex in kindergarten, nor do I believe that high schools should describe every explicit detail to those in their classes, but there is definitely room for improvement. First of all, as I stated before, a select few students circled ‘use of contraception’ as being important in the future – and as far as I’m concerned, that’s a word that the course should be teaching. The schools aren’t doing anything wrong by saying that abstinence is a sure way to stop pregnancy from happening; though, they should be letting kids know that being completely innocent isn’t the only way to secure a teenager’s youth. Abstinence is a foolproof way of not becoming pregnant, but teaching that is the only way is wrong. It’s true that some forms of contraception may fail, but when taking extra precaution, there isn’t much room for malfunction.
Overall, there are a few changes needed for the sexual education class taught in both Cedar Springs High School and the rest of the area who both took the same class and even had the same spokeswoman that I had in one of CSHS’s rival schools. The course should not only teach about how having sex can be dangerous, but also let the teenagers know that there are ways for them to stay safe from troubles caused by being active at an early age; mistakes are inevitable in high schools and should be addressed accordingly.

I know I have to re-write some things, but I am mostly only putting this on Mibba because I go to a Nazi-like school where every single place I could go to email myself a paper for school is blocked, including googledocs.

FML

any comments, since you're reading?