Research Essay on Sex Education

In the article “Sex Education” Gale, a Cengage Company covers two different teaching styles on the topic of “Sex Education”. These two styles are comprehensive sex education and abstinence-only sex education. Comprehensive sex education is an “evidence-based approach that provides students with medically accurate, age-appropriate information about all aspects of human sexuality, including anatomy, reproduction, sexual activity, sexually transmitted infections (STIs), contraception, and sexual rights and responsibilities.” While abstinence-only sex education is “a morality-based approach that focuses on encouraging students to refrain from engaging in sexual activity until they are married.” The author goes on to explain that “37.6% of females and 39.2% of males between ages fifteen and nineteen engaged in sexual intercourse” The author further explains how sex education is not mandated at a national level. Not only were the teens having sexual intercourse, but 46% also did not use a condom. Clearly, this is a problem. STIs and unplanned pregnancies are just the tip of what could go wrong. Now with this in mind, the author believes sex education should be mandated, with the approach of comprehensive sex education.

In the article “Schools Reject Religious Morality in Favor of “Comprehensive” Sexual Education” author David Lewis Schaefer portrays his opinion on comprehensive sexuality education. The first point Schaefer makes is comprehensive education programs encourage students to question moral authority and treat sexual activity as a right that parents should not interfere with.” The author follows up with the idea of distancing religious foundations from teachings with recent groups such as “Freedom from Religion Foundation” trying to remove such ideas from education. He goes on to explain a lesson that was being taught to students. The lesson had students explaining “what a boy” and “girl” is to a hypothetical extraterrestrial. He found such a lesson to be foolish.

Both comprehensive and abstinence-only sex education have their pros and cons but I believe comprehensive sex education is more efficient to stop unnecessary STIs and pregnancies. I’m not a religious person I’d consider myself agnostic, so I'm biased towards evidence-based education Although the second article had valid points I find myself questioning if it's necessarily a bad thing to “question moral authority” If we lead by religion rather than fact is it unfair to students. Being told beliefs rather than facts would only cause delusion. I’m glad the topic of sex education is being discussed as a whole seeing how the statics of STIs and unplanned pregnancies are rising and hope for a change in the way in which sex education is taught.