By Anna Matson, staff writer
Sex education in the United States is not teaching many students what they need to know about their sexual health. It is difficult to find specific faults within their system of sex education considering that it is regulated differently in different states.
According to the Guttmacher Institute’s “State Policies in Brief on Sex and HIV Education,” only 23 states and the District of Columbia mandate sex education, 13 states require instruction is medically accurate, and two states prohibit the program from promoting religion.
It is frightening to think that less than half of the country has sex education mandated and the ones who are being educated, may be misinformed by an authority leading them to believe it is true. If there are only two states prohibiting sex education from promoting religion, then there will be states teaching abstinence-only and that homosexuality is unacceptable in society or wrong.
Abstinence-only education sometimes uses analogies that can hurt victims of sexual assault or teenagers who have chosen to become sexually active. These analogies may include “the chewed piece of gum” analogy, suggesting if a teen has had sex, they are no longer desirable, like an old piece of gum.
Elizabeth Smart, who was 14-years-old when she was abducted in 2012 and repeatedly raped for nine months; her sex education teacher used the chewed gum metaphor for her class.
Smart reflected on that incident in a 2013 interview with Slate.
“Well, that’s terrible. No one should ever say that. But for me, I thought, ‘I’m that chewed-up piece of gum.’ Nobody re-chews a piece of gum. You throw it away. And that’s how easy it is to feel you no longer have worth. Your life no longer has value,” she said.
This should not be how our sex education makes anyone feel, whether they are a victim of sexual assault or a teenager who chose to become sexually active. America has the highest teen pregnancy rates of developed countries, so we need to inform them of the variety of birth control methods.
In 2013, a total of 273,105 babies were born from women of the ages 15–19 years, for a live birth rate of 26.5 per 1,000 women in this age group, according to the U.S. Center of Disease Control and Prevention. Telling all students to wait until marriage is obviously not working well with numbers that high, so we need to take a different approach. Especially considering the U.S. Department of Health and Human Resources states nearly 89 percent of these births occurred outside of marriage.
We need to present students with all the options they have for birth control, so when they do decide to become sexually active they are able to decide when they are ready, financially and emotionally, to conceive and care for a child.
Some students are unsure of what the line of consent is; that’s a dilemma because with uncertainty like that you can end up in prison.
The Washington Post did a poll in 2015 asking, “What if someone undresses? Or gets a condom? Or nods in agreement?” At least 40 percent of current and recent college students said those actions establish consent for more sexual activity; and at least 40 percent said it did not. That is a blurry line for something that can send you to jail.
The poem “Roses are red, violets are blue. We’re having sex, ‘cause I’m stronger than you,” was recently heard recited by a high school boy to his friends, followed by their laughter. People, typically women, should not have to be concerned about sexual assault more than they already are because of sayings like those.
We need to reform our sex education system. It has already done harm, so we must adjust it before it causes more damage or becomes more detrimental.