Recently, a district in Texas has had an outbreak of
chlamydia with at least 20 cases being confirmed. They have estimated that at
least 1 in 15 students has contracted the sexually transmitted disease. Since finding
this information out, the school district had sent out letters to parents of
all the children in the district, even going as far as to send warning letters
to the parents of kids in the junior high schools in the district. Three weeks
after sending out these letters to the parents, 5 more cases of chlamydia were
confirmed. What is funny about this whole situation is that the schools policy
on sexual education is terrible, and we had been discussing what is and is
wrong with sexual education programs in schools these days. Prior to the
outbreak, the district did not even offer a curriculum in human sexuality,
however in the school handbook it states that if a curriculum is “needed,” they
have specific boundaries and rules they have to follow. These include: “presenting
abstinence as the preferred choice of behavior in relationship to all sexual
activity for unmarried persons of school age, devoting attention to abstinence
from sexual activity over any other behavior, and emphasizing the fact that
abstinence is the only way to 100% ensure that you cannot get pregnant or
contract a sexually transmitted disease.” All this does is teach kids that they
should not have sex… EVER. This is not a realistic thing to teach, and it leaves
out other important aspects of what is important about sex like love and
relationships. After having an outbreak that severe, I sure hope that school district
reconsiders having a human sexuality class and if they do, I hope they teach
the importance of safe sex, and include other aspects of relationships and love.
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2015/05/05/texas-high-school-chlamydia-outbreak_n_7216822.html
This is so interesting, Veja! The lack of sexual education in schools is amazing to me. The topic goes completely unspoken about but teenagers are automatically just supposed to know about it. It forces kids to learn about sex through songs, magazines, and other forms of the media. If schools provided more discussion based sexual education, sex would not be so strange to talk about. Kids would learn about the importance of safe sex and that it is apart of life instead of learning that sex is awful and you shouldn't do it until you're married.
ReplyDelete