Sexual Education: Comprehensive Vs. Abstinence-Only

Sexual Education: Comprehensive Vs. Abstinence-Only

High school is either the best days of your life or four years of struggling and mild torture for teens, and the pressure to be sexually active can push adolescents towards the latter. The idea that sexual activity is the ticket to popularity is burned into teens brains by the media, through television, major label music, and movies, their peers, and celebrity role models. They are bombarded with images and sounds dripping with sexual innuendos and sometimes-blatant encouragement of adolescent sex. It is almost impossible to believe that any teen has not become sexually active after their constant exposure to the sex-craved American entertainment system. These are some of the reasons that recently, within the past decade, high schools have employed abstinence only sexual education programs, partly due to the outcry from parents. These programs encourage students to be sexually abstinent by teaching them what horrors teen pregnancy and sexually transmitted diseases bring to endless amounts of their peers. However, sex education programs like these only support abstinence, and do not educate students on the non-terrifying aspects of sexual activity, like its intimacy and methods of contraception. They try to force the decision to not have sex upon students, hoping that they will abide by their wishes, but leaving the students who still choose to become sexually active completely unprepared for the possible consequences. Teens are making their decision to have sex without knowledge of proper contraceptive techniques and ways to protect themselves from sexually transmitted diseases because their school sexual education classes failed to mention them. Public school sexual education classes should cover all the aspects of a good sexual education, and not just abstinence.

Vanessa Grigoriadis, a freelance writer who has appeared in the New York Times, writes, "Organizations advocating sexual abstinence among teenagers have been gaining strength in the past decade, with the result that more teens are planning to retain their virginity longer." (Grigoriadis) These organizations appeal to teens by "making abstinence seem cool, popular, and normal." They spotlight celebrities like Jessica Simpson, Britney Spears, and her Mickey Mouse Club co-star Justin Timberlake and their pride in maintaining their virginity. Clubs, alliances, and organizations have been popping up all over the country, whether adults looking to prevent teen pregnancy, church groups looking to protect their youth ministries, or teenagers themselves who want to take a stand against popular norms, form them. High school student have been quick to join abstinent supporting groups, showing that many of them have a determination to remain sexually inactive. (Grigoriadis) This self-determination, combined with the proper education administered by their schools including all aspects of sexual information, could bring the world the most sexually informed and responsible generation ever.

In 1996, President Bill Clinton proclaimed May "National Pregnancy Prevention Month." It marked the beginning of the National Campaign to Prevent Teen Pregnancy, an initiative supported entirely by private donations, mostly by Christian action groups and groups like the Boy Scouts and Girl Scouts of America. Kristine Napier, the author of The Power of Abstinence, reports "the Campaign aims to create a national consensus that unwed teen pregnancy is not acceptable... how the Campaign hopes to accomplish its goal, however, remains unclear." She's is not sure whether it will "focus on contraceptive education and availability, or... acknowledge the legitimacy and success of the abstinence approach." (Napier) Teen pregnancy rates are at a historic high, and an alarming one-third of the twenty million annual reported cases of sexually transmitted diseases are junior-high and high- school students. These children have always been taught that abstinence is the best course, but they still choose to go out and participate in sexual activities. Their participation cannot be prevented, that has been proven. Teens, no matter how much abstinence is preached to them, will sometimes choose to have sex, and if they are uneducated on sexual safety and precautionary measures, the numbers mentioned above about teen pregnancy and sexually transmitted diseases will continue to climb.

High school students are notorious for being rebellious and making life altering decisions based on what the believe goes against the wishes of their parents and adult influences. The high school norms have always been to disobey. Smoking is a problem in every high school in America, and teens are drinking alcohol at a record rate, so what makes schools think they can prevent their student from having sex just by teaching them that it is dangerous? Student are told that sexually transmitted diseases like HIV can kill them, and schools that that is enough of a deterrent to prevent their sexual activity, however, adolescents are taught that smoking will eventually kill them, yet cigarettes