Sex education

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For Educators Current: What is Sex Education?
What is Sex Education?

In This Section
Sex education helps people gain the information, skills and motivation to make healthy decisions about sex and sexuality. Planned Parenthood is the nation’s largest provider of sex education, reaching 1.5 million people a year.

Facts About Comprehensive Sex Education

Sex education is high quality teaching and learning about a broad variety of topics related to sex and sexuality, exploring values and beliefs about those topics and gaining the skills that are needed to navigate relationships and manage one’s own sexual health. Sex education may take place in schools, in community settings, or online. Planned Parenthood believes that parents play a critical and central role in providing sex education. Resources for parents can be found here.

Comprehensive sexuality education refers to K-12 programs that cover a broad range of topics related to:

Human Development (including reproduction, puberty, sexual orientation, and gender identity)

Relationships (including families, friendships, romantic relationships and dating)

Personal Skills (including communication, negotiation, and decision-making)

Sexual Behavior (including abstinence and sexuality throughout life)

Sexual Health (including sexually transmitted diseases, contraception, and pregnancy)

Society and Culture (including gender roles, diversity, and sexuality in the media)

Several important resources exist to guide comprehensive sexuality education implementation, including:

The Sexuality Information and Education Council of the United States (SIECUS) Guidelines for Comprehensive Sexuality Education was developed by a national task force of experts in the field of adolescent development, health care, and education. They provide a framework of the key concepts, topics, and messages that all sexuality education programs would ideally include.

The Future of Sex Education Initiative (FoSE) seeks to create a national dialogue about the future of sex education and to promote the institutionalization of comprehensive sexuality education in public schools. They have developed the first-ever National Sexuality Education Standards, National Teacher Preparation Standards and many additional toolkits and materials to strengthen comprehensive sexuality education implementation and professional development.

What Role Does Planned Parenthood Play In Sex Education?

Planned Parenthood education staff reach 1.5 million individuals each year, and 64% of those individuals are middle school and high school aged youth.

Planned Parenthood education departments provide a robust range of programming options, including:

Evidence-Based education programs for young people, adults and priority populations

Peer Education Programs

Promotores Programs and other community-driven, culturally relevant health education programs.

Parent/Family Education Programs

LGBTQ-focused Programs for LGBTQ youth and their parents/caregivers.

Training of Professionals, including educators and school-staff, community-based organization staff, and faith-based leaders.

IMPORTANCE OF SEX EDUCATION
QUICK BITES:
Youngsters risk their lives when they remain unaware about sex. Sex education will expose them to their sexual expression.It will protect them from unwanted pregnancies and STDs.Intensive training can prevent the prevalence of unauthentic sexual information.
The age of modernisation and progress has virtually opened a Pandora’s Box of opportunities and choices for the youth today. This makes the need for sex education among the youth necessary. The youngsters are unpredictable and the risk-taking streak makes them more vulnerable.

As far as sex education for youth is concerned, one does see an obvious increase in unwanted teen pregnancies, miscarriages, abortions and spread of STDs. This statistical evidence also proves how unaware the youth are in terms of risking their lives. Precautionary measure is the need of the hour. One must know how to tackle the restlessness of the youth and channelise their energies to a more meaningful direction. Sex education will also expose them to their gender identity, family responsibility, body images, sexual expression, intimacy and the marriage relationship.

Imparting sex education to youngsters

Introducing sex education in school curriculum. This might be implemented in private and government schools with a carefully knitted syllabus covering all the aspects of sex education for youth.
Various risky behaviours among youth, such as forced sex, indulging in pornography, physical abuse can lead to early pregnancies. This should form the vital part of the curriculum helping the youth to understand the unethical and inhuman aspect of such behaviours.
It should also provide the knowledge of contraceptives and the difference between various contraception methods, such as morning pills, contraceptives, condoms and finally abortion. This should also include the time duration for taking these precautions. Many girls from varied age groups do not have access to this information and give birth to stillborn babies or even encounter death.
Colleges and schools can hold debates and discussions on the importance of sex education and sensitise teachers and students.
A major section of the Indian society lives below the poverty line, therefore, in order to attract the attention of this social stratum, alternate methods of education must be approached. Film screenings and visual media showing the intensity of STDs and life-taking diseases are a few suggestions. Apart from that, free health camps should also be set up that supply condoms and regular health checkups for the underprivileged.
Make the youth understand, through intensive training programmes, the importance of self worth. Random sexual acts can cause irreparable damage to the human body. Every individual should learn to understand the worth of life.
Another important point within sex education is to teach the youth about personal hygiene.
The youth must not allow the generation gap they have with their parents come in the way. Consultation with parents, guardians or trusted authorities can be the best way to put one’s anxieties to rest.
Prejudice and biases prevent one from understanding the importance of sex education. Every youth must undertake this venture as a responsibility and not just as curriculum.

PARENTS ROLE
As a former teen, and now parent, nurse, scientist and teacher, I could never figure out why parents talk about the birds and bees when attempting to address the topic of sex with their kids. With all their good intentions, this fails to cover the material most kids want to know about.

At the end of the story, the kids are not quite sure what pollen has to do with sex and some come to think they were hatched from an bird-like egg.

I don’t know why people have a hard time being honest about the body. Everybody has one, and it’s so full of wonder and performs so many amazing things that we need to celebrate it. We need to honor it, not be embarrassed by it or disregard it.

Over the years of teaching human anatomy and sexuality to sixth-graders, I can attest to all the children who need and want solid and relevant information — and all the misinformation and problems they face when they don’t get it from their parents and are forced to learn from their friends, the street or the Internet. No one could imagine the myths, rumors, confusion and honest questions I hear in class. Which confirms to me the urgent need for families to openly address this subject.

For some 12-year-olds, it’s too late — they are already sexually active. For others, it’s just around the corner. From the music, advertisements and the movies, there is no getting around it.

Personal finance and sex continue to be the most avoided topics in most homes today — yet our society depends on financially literate citizens who know why they need to keep their pants on. Which is why sex ed in schools has become so critical. Whether it’s because they aren’t comfortable with the topic or perhaps they don’t know themselves, parents are failing to convey accurate and honest information.

Today show contributor A. Pawlowski suggests avoiding formal sit-down talks, and to instead use small, teachable moments. Plan the images and words you will use. Kids are extremely literal and you don’t want to create discomfort.

START AT BEGINNING

The first thing parents can do for toddlers and preschool children is to begin referring to body parts by their names. A penis is no different than a nostril. It’s only funny because we make it so. Get over it.

When the question arises about where babies come from, most kids do well with the dad’s sperm fertilizes the mom’s egg scenario that leads to a fertilized egg that grows and develops into a baby within the uterus. And, please don’t say stomach. The stomach is full of hydrochloric acid, so no baby could ever exist there.

The importance of a full discussion on puberty (the release of special hormones and all the body changes that come as a result), cannot be understated. I find that girls know about having a menstrual period, but they have no clue why. They know nothing to very little about their anatomy. Boys tend to be equally ignorant about their internal anatomy. This information should be discussed around 9 or 10, when body changes start to occur.

School-age kids (10-12), want an explanation of intercourse (“How does the sperm get to the egg?”). I have found that the simplest, most straightforward approach is the best. They want to know, but they don’t need to know more than they are ready for.

In class, I find when I remove the person from the body part, the class can hold a better discussion. A depersonalized body part creates a more stable visual image. At this point I interject the importance of being in love and being married (or in a committed relationship), and the risks and responsibility of becoming a teen parent, and then I move on to explain that the penis is made to fit into the vagina so it can deliver the sperm to the egg released by the ovary.

TEENS

By now, kids have already begun formulating their own values. Frequent “check-ins” provide a better context for the information your child is getting. But avoid overkill and lectures or you’ll be tuned out and left out.

Not all parent-child sex talks are 100 percent effective. A Planned Parenthood Federation survey showed that half of all teens felt uncomfortable talking to their parents about sex (while 19 percent of parents felt uncomfortable) and that there needs to be more parent-teen discussion about the prevention of pregnancy and sexually transmitted diseases.

Parents and teens have very varying perceptions about how often they discuss sex and what is being discussed. On one hand, parents think they’re giving sage advice, but teens hear a lecture. Teens need to have the right information to help them make smart choices about relationships and sex, and how to avoid getting pressured into sex when no one is around.