Hey kids, don't do the dirty!

By Tanner, Michael, and Jacqui

                In many schools, the only sex education students get is this: Don’t have sex. There’s no other way to prevent bad things from happening to you. Many of these abstinence-only schools tip toe around the dirty deets – Like, besides pregnancy, what could happen if we had sex? They don’t talk about contraception, STD’s, or anything that has to do with sex at all. They just say “Don’t have sex.” Hoping the students’ lack of knowledge of anything sexual will keep them from having sex. No one wants to jump into a black pit, especially if they don’t know what’s down there, right?

                Wrong. Most students don’t spend their entire day at school. They come home; watch TV, or read, or whatever the hell they want to do. Now, the media, in all its forms, doesn’t censor itself just because Junior might possibly be viewing. No, they broadcast whatever seductive or scandalous thing they want to: music videos that have sultry women dancing around the Pimp-daddy rapper, a steamy scene in a movie, or a graphic chapter in a novel. It doesn’t matter what it is. What matters is that teens are exposed to it all the time. Schools can’t completely monitor all that their students see.

                This being said, if a younger teenage boy sees something that makes his hormones go wild, he’s going to want to do something. If he only has the school’s abstinence-only teachings to go off of, he may not know about proper contraception, or even about masturbation. So, if he and little Susie decide that they’d like to try, even though it’s against everything they’ve been told, there’s really nothing stopping them.

                Then…. Oops. Susie is pregnant, and that boy has the clap. Why? No birth control, no condoms, nothing. The cycle of life is beautiful… until it’s pulling you out of school to watch baby.

                That’s why it’s so important that, while schools may teach abstinence only, they should at least teach about the dangers of STDs, the proper usage of contraception, and EVERYTHING that could happen if something does, indeed, happen. It’s better for students to be in the know. Look at the graph on page four of  this.  It shows the difference between abstinence-plus (which is the teachings of abstinence only PLUS the admittance that students will have sex, and the teaching of contraception and the dangers of STDs) and abstinence-only education.

Face it, teenagers have had, are having, and will have sex. That’s all there is to it. It doesn’t matter whether or not you tell them that the only way to keep any bad things from happening is to not have sex. Most of them are about as hard headed as an ox. They won’t listen, and will probably go ahead and do whatever they want. However, if they are shown the full picture, at least not as many of them will turn into this.