- Pregnancy
- Baby & Toddler
- Parents
- Getting Pregnant
- Baby Names
- Product Reviews
-
Registry
- Community
-
More
Want a personalized experience?
Download the free app
Parenting
Do you think sex ed should be taught in school?
If so at what age?
Were you taught it in school?
Is it taught in schools where you live?
My answer:
Yes, I think sex ed should be taught in school. It is ultimately the parents responsibility to do, however, some parents today just are not doing it. There are too many "babies having babies."
In school we had a week of "sex ed" for about an hour a day, but it was more about the female anatomy and its functions. Not really about sex. The girls and boys were split up into different classes and we had to have parents permission to attend the class. They talked about how babies were made, but that was the extent of it.
No, it is not taught in schools where I live, I wish it was.
This discussion has been closed.
Re: Do you think sex ed should be taught in school?
Absolutely! Have you not read some of r9's posts....it's scary.
Yes, I did have sex ed. It pretty much started in 4th grade when we started talking about the human body and development. I had some form of sex ed every year from 4th grade through 10th grade.
Christmas 2011
Yes! Absolutely, I also think condoms, birth control, and GYNs should be available without parental consent to teens for low and or no cost in a community enviroment that is accessible to teens.
I don't think any female should have to face an unwanted pregnancy ever, and I feel especially strongly about it with teens. Both sexually transmitted diseases and pregnancy in your teens are life limiting for both parent and child in a way that having a child even just a few years later, is not. (I know there are exceptions to the rule, but in general, teen parents are not the best parents, and everything from education to health care suffers for both parent and child.)
1. yes it should be taught around grade 6 (or 7 at the latest)
2. ?yes I had sex ed in grade 7, catholic school too, the nuns arranged for a local woman dr and a couple of other people (I think they were parents but not with kids in our class) to do it.?
3. I assume it is since its been standard in the whole country (where I live, not the US anymore) for decades.
The tricky thing is teaching the facts without choosing the moral slant which will invariably offend some parents. At the catholic school I went to we had a ton of very religious families, ?heaps of lapsed catholics who just wanted their kids to get the same background they had or sent kids there because it was quite simply the best academic school in the district, and a few kids who weren't catholic at all (lutheran, hindu or atheist usually).
The way we were taught it was like a biology class. This is what happens, this is what CAN happen. In the early age classes we were told to ask our parents, or if we didn't like that, to ask our Dr or teacher ?about how to prevent pregnancy or disease, but that no method was perfect. Later on (in grade 8 I think) they went more into condoms and the pill and how they worked. IT was very factual. The nuns attitude was pretty clearly "we don't think you should do it for a long long time but if you do for goodness sake use a condom". They were saying a lot less about the pill which I t hink was fair enough since if kids are going to have sex young you really want the disease protection not just the pregnancy protection. Also for many catholics (though not church dogma) the condom is a LOT less controversial. In fact I don't know a catholic family that is anti-condom. Then again they are mostly Drs families that I know :-) But condoms are less controversial anyway because they prevent the fertilisation altogether without getting into the whole "pre/post implantation" question should ovulation happen to occur.
We also had classes about relationships that focussed on respect for yourself (not sleeping around or having sex early in a relationship) and for others (to be honest mostly directed at the boys).
To be honest I am amazed this is still an issue for schools and parents to find grappling. If a bunch of nuns can run an informative non-controversial sex ed in the early 1980s then the whole of America ought to have it sorted by now.?
I should say that my high school did a pecuilarly bad job of sex ed. They had a high profile Dr (well known in our city for her slot on a TV show) and she was all glib lines and put downs of anyone who thought morality was even something to be discussed (specifically she said some very offensive things about catholics clearly without having a clue what catholics believed). I just was so appalled I had no respect for the woman or anything she said. Luckily I already knew everything I needed to know. In fact I was already on the pill (though a virgin for nearly another decade) because I had hormone issues.
In trying not to moralise you have to be careful not to put down morality or promote promiscuity. As I said, if a bunch of nuns can do it despite being wtihin a church with specific views then it can't be that hard.
While access for Drs for young people is vital, we should not be promoting that as the first port of call without parental discussion. To us it was always a last resort but certainly there. Since at 15 or so you get your own medicare card and can access medical services at no cost without any consent in Australia and we all grew up knowing that, it really wasn't an issue. More to the point was encouraging kids not to run off to the Dr without trying to talk to their parents or educating Drs about how to encourage kids to talk to their parents.
In the US its different because kids would usually find accessing Drs hard without their parents knowing (through copays, insurance notifications and so on).
While I think handing out free condoms is a good idea, I do also think that they need to know how to use them, that they do sometimes break (nothing is foolproof) and that it isn't necessarily a great idea to sleep around EVEN with a condom. So any condom availability should come after a very basic sex ed program. JMO.
The pill is much more controversial because it is a medication. Some people shouldn't have it. Some people will get side effects from it. Can you imagine a really well informed teen trying to tell her mum she doesn't want to start antibiotics for her bronchitis for another 2 days (until her period) just in case she gets pg because she had sex at lunchtime? Likely she a) wouldn't know antibiotics might interfere and b) wouldn't tell her mum she was on the pill. I think parents have much more right to know about medication and medical treatment (like abortion) than they do about condoms.
And anyway condoms unlike the pill protect from STDs as well.?
It should be taught in school. I think that in elementary school they should start by talking about anatomy and periods, etc. By middle school they should talk about more, abstenance (sp), protection, STDs, etc. In my HS they taught that stuff in 10th grade and my then many kids are already having unprotected sex because their parents are not telling them.
I find it crazy that the same parents that will not talk about sex with their kids do not want them to learn from the school either - where do they want them to learn, in the backseat of a car or in the woods somewhere? Oh, wait, they think if they do not hear about protection then they will not have sex.
Yes, we learned anatomy, etc in elementary. I distinctly remember the day that the boys went to one room and the girls to the other, we all laughed about it on the playground. We learned about it in health. We had an HIV positive speaker at our high school when I was a freshman, that, and watching the movie "Kids" scared the crap out of me enough to know to be safe or not do it.
Yes, I think they should, it works!