Comprehensive Sex Education

Sex Education and Its Benefits Sex education is one of the most important parts of education in an adolescent’s lifetime. Comprehensive sexual education should be taught in schools over abstinence-focused sex education. In abstinence-only education, it is highly stressed that premarital sex will lead to social, physical, and psychological consequences, and that abstinence is the only acceptable way to guarantee a life of moral integrity. A comprehensive curriculum may include topics like consent and power, sexuality and identity, safer sex and contraception, and communication and values. Comprehensive curriculums are controversial because some parents are concerned that the sex education program will go against their personal religions or conservative values. In many religions, sex is frowned upon until marriage. Even though abstinence only education is beneficial in a few cases, comprehensive sexual education should be taught because it could answer many questions the student may have about their changing bodies and state of mind, and
Lack of knowledge about sex leads to higher rates of STDs. With any sex education, STDs can be prevented, and if they happen to occur, comprehensive sex education teaches affected students how to address their situation. An early introduction to sex that is not through education “increases the risks for negative health and educational outcomes, such as pregnancy and school dropout” (Grossman et al., “Family” 810). Sex education prevents students from being experimental with sex (De). “Preteens are increasingly charged and convicted of sexually based crimes”, but “children arrested for perpetrating sexual offenses are five times more likely than children who have not been arrested to have experienced sexual violence themselves (Illinois Juvenile Justice Commission's 2014,16)” (Meiners 246). Because kids are exposed to sex early on, education in school is