Argumentative Essay Sex Education

Sex Education: a review The phrase ‘social problems’ nowadays can be described in many different meanings, from various aspects. It may include a crime as small as stealing candies to murder. Another case of a social problem being frequently discussed in our country is the immoral or improper sexual behaviours, especially among youngsters. I have chosen two articles pertaining to this issue. For the first article, it is written by Loh Ling Ming, a writer from News Straits Time (2005), a consultant with both the FamilyLife and Leadership Development Ministries of Malaysia Campus Crusade for Christ. She has stated in her article, Sex Education from the Cradle, that this problem may be countered by teaching sex education to children as early as possible. However, her arguments in the acknowledged article are still questionable and unsound. Her opinions may not be considered as facts, as it is not stated in the article whether she is directly involved or obtained any experience in sex education. Her position in the ministries IS JUST A TOOL TO MANIPULATE THE READERS, HENCE CAN BE CLASSIFIED as an appeal to authority. In her introductory paragraph, the author quoted a case regarding immoral sexual acts in the U.S.
There was a case in Washington where 9 year old boy was trying to get a 6 year old girl to “sleep” with him. This unacceptable incident could easily avoided if the boy were to be exposed to sex education at an early age
Line 7-8, paragraph 1
Loh Ming Ling intended to use this case to show us what is going to happen if sex education is not taught to our children. Yes, that case in the U.S. may be related to problems of sexual behaviours, but there is still lack of supporting evidence in her claim. She did inform us what has occurred in the case, but did not specify when it happened. The author failed to show whether the incidence happened before or after sex education has been introduced in the U.S. To argue against the author, it may be said that sex education has already been introduced before the incidence happened, but it clearly showed no effects. In the U.S., teenage birth rates had dropped since 1991 to the early 2000, but a 2007 report showed a 3% increase from 2005 to 2006 (CDC National Center for Health Statistics, 2007). On top of that, a person named Wilhem Reich WROTE a book about sex education as early as 1936 (wikipedia.com IS THIS THE CORRECT CITATION FORMAT?), showing that sex education has existed a long time ago. Hence, sex education is not something new or foreign to the public as claimed by the author. Thus, the author is actually missing the point in her first claim. Define what is missing the point. Next, the author stated that our television stations cast movies with ideas of immorality and sex misconducts. With this statement, she hoped to inform us that vulgar movies in television channels are also caused by lack of sex education. Although it may have a nearly same social issue, it is not related in reality. Sex education is a syllabus in schools, its main aim was to provide children with the knowledge and skills to cope with the physical and emotional changes of adolescence as well as to maintain healthy relationships with family and other members of the community (Raj, 2010); it is not meant to control the films casted by television stations. This is a fallacy of weak analogy, as the issue of films casted by television stations and sex educations can neither be linked nor compared. Define briefly what is weak analogy. Besides that, Loh Ling Ming wrote that parents are responsible to teach their children about sex, and one the goals of sex education is to provide related issues from God’s perspective. She also quoted citations from the Bible to support her opinions. What she had taken for granted here is that not every single parent in our country believes in God, and among the believers, not all of them are Christians. This claim gave the readers a depiction that sexual misbehaviours only occur among Christians, and sex education is only for Christians, which is not true at all. Sex education is taught to shape the attitude and values of youngsters among all religions and believes, thus we need to take into account the political, religious and cultural sensitiveness in the society (Dr. Raj, 2010). This claim revealed that the author has made a number of hasty generalisations. Define briefly what is hasty generalisations. Apart from that, the author put a number of resources for children to learn more about sex. The resources stated are from parents, schools, and churches. Then, the writer eliminated the responsibility from schools and churches, thus concluded that the burden to teach children about sex is only on parents. The first mistake done here is that the writer only gave a limited number of resources for children to obtain sex education, while there in fact are a lot more choices, such as counsellors, doctors, books and articles. A survey conducted by Methodist Piley Institute showed that 19% of students learned about sex from the media, 12% from literature, 10% from pastors and 5% percent from teachers (Ho, 2010). The next mistake she did is taking out two out of three resources stated in her article, to conclude that only one resource is available to be used. This is actually a fallacy of false dilemma. Define... In addition, the writer also stated a chain reaction that started with a good example from the parent and ends in the child being a complete sexually educated grownup. In contrast, a bad example from the parents will cause an end result of the child’s misunderstanding of sex. This claim can still be proven wrong. What the writer did was just providing a chain reaction to reach a conclusion. Not all children are influenced by behaviour of their parents. Some children are not even close to their parents. The child’s sexual behaviour may also be influenced by the media, the internet, friends, or role models among relatives other than their parents. A national survey found that there were children as young as nine years old watching porn (Raj, 2010). So where do they get the porn materials from? Of course not from their parents. Hence, the writer’s claim cannot support her conclusion, as it contains a fallacy of slippery slope. Define ... Overall, the claims in the first article can be considered as weak and lack supporting evidence. The supporting evidence of the writer’s claim is not enough to convince the readers to agree with her stand. For instance, Loh used only The Bible to support her statements, which may only convince Christian readers, whereas the article is supposed to be written for all Malaysians, as stated in the second paragraph of the article. She should have made some other references either from the experts or books recognised by all Malaysians. The writer also seemed to appear emotional while writing this article, as she had placed a total of 11 exclamations marks in the article. Hence, this article in general is not reliable to be referred to.
In the second article that I have chosen, entitled “….” by X, the arguments put forward are sound and well documented. The author manages to convince the reader to accept her arguments by giving valid evidences to support her claims.

References:
Long Term Affair (2010) Retrieved September 18, 2010, from http://thestar.com.my/news/story.asp?file=/2010/7/18/nation/6687598&sec=nation Pauline Ho (2010) Children Believe Parents Must Lead in Sex Education – Survey Retrieved September 18, 2010, from http://thestar.com.my/metro/story.asp?file=/2010/6/4/sarawak/6397294&sec=sarawak Sex Education (undated) Retrieved September 18, 2010, from
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sex_education