In America, sexual education is treated differently than other types of education…why? We treat sex like we do alcohol and drugs: something to be avoided. If we treat is (when conducted correctly) as positive and healthy, perhaps we would see better results.

The first link when you Google “sex ed in American schools” tells you that there is too much sexual education in America.

“Today, children are continually bombarded with sexual propaganda. More and more children are experimenting with sexual encounters and thus contracting STDs, becoming pregnant, having abortions and using contraception. Not only is the media bombarding our children with this information, but children are also being bombarded with this through the sex education programs in schools. Because of sex education programs, schools have been taking away the parents’ responsibilities of teaching their child about human sexuality”

The site blames Planned Parenthood for STD’s and unwanted teen pregnancies, claiming that sex education programs often lead to the “deformation of a child’s conscience.” And to top it all off: “It is not a school’s place to impose sexual immorality upon its students.”

I don’t know about anyone else, but when I had my first sex ed class in about sixth grade I was disgusted and wanted to be as far away from anyone else’s genitalia as possible; I’m pretty sure most of my friends felt the same way. It did give us information that we might not have been comfortable asking a parent but that was crucial to knowing how to treat our own bodies and the bodies of others safely and with respect. But trust me, the last thing we wanted to do after one of those classes was jump into bed with someone.

Only 22 states and the District of Columbia require that public schools teach sexual education. Thirty-three states and the District of Columbia require that students receive instruction about HIV/AIDS. Nineteen states require “that if provided, sex education must be medically, factually or technically accurate. State definitions of ‘medically accurate’ vary, from requiring that the department of health review curriculum for accuracy, to mandating that curriculum be based on information from ‘published authorities upon which medical professionals rely’”.

The rate of teen births in America has decreased, but it is still significantly higher than the birth rates in the industrial world. About a quarter of girls will become pregnant by the time they are twenty years old, and those teenage mothers are “less likely to finish high school and are more likely than their peers to live in poverty, depend on public assistance, and be in poor health. Their children are more likely to suffer health and cognitive disadvantages, come in contact with the child welfare and correctional systems, live in poverty, drop out of high school and become teen parents themselves.” It’s a vicious circle.

A CDC study revealed that nearly 15 percent of 15-year-olds have had sex, and 23 percent of teens didn’t use contraception when they lost their virginity. About 83 percent of sexually experienced teen girls participating in the study said they didn’t get formal sexual education until after having begun to have intercourse.

In addition, people ages fifteen to twenty-four represent a quarter of the sexually active population, but acquire half of all new STI’s. What’s worse, about four in ten of teens who completed a survey claiming they were sexually active admitted they failed to use a condom the last time they had intercourse.

According to a report by the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, the reason why STI’s and STD’s are such a rampant problem is that sex education isn’t happening enough or early enough.

Not only is sexual education in too short a supply, it has been tied to gender discrimination. In Mississippi in 2014, students in their sex ed class were instructed to unwrap a peppermint patty and pass it around the class, acknowledging how dirty it became. They were comparing girls who engaged in pre-marital sex to a piece of used, dirty chocolate, just like the Clovis Unified School District in California compared a sexually active woman to a dirty shoe.

Both of these schools practiced abstinence-only education, rather than comprehensive education. Abstinence-only, while a very safe option that would probably be the best for the teenagers of America, is simply unrealistic. Teen pregnancy is higher in states with abstinence-only education, probably because once a couple has chosen to break the rules they don’t know how to conduct themselves safely. Most teenagers get their sex ed information online, which is certainly not 100 percent accurate.

Now the question remains: Why are we still having this problem? Professor Jonathan Zimmerman asserts America should have been able to move past this issue in the 20th century, a century which brought us “near-universal school attendance and a near-complete revolution in sexual freedom and expression.” Zimmerman calls the 20th century the Century of School and the Century of Sex.

But there is certainly a reasonable cause of the stunted growth of sexual education. Parents, not only in America but across the world, have worried that sex ed “might wake the sleeping bear” of sexual activity, introducing them to a side of their children they are definitely unprepared to see. Amy Lang, a sexuality and parenting expert says, “Sexuality is something that most people try to pretend is not an inherent part of being human…As a culture and even as individuals, we don’t want to embrace the fact that we’re sexual creatures.” According to Lang, as a result teens find a lot of their sexual education through watching pornography, thinking they know everything about sex because they’ve watched other people do it. “What’s missing is that they don’t have a fundamental understanding of sexuality — the cultural, emotional, inherent aspect of being human.”

On that note, it is important not just to teach kids the logistics and “how-to” parts of sex, but to emphasize the emotional impacts it can have on themselves and their partner. Teaching about consent and how to have healthy relationships are major parts of this. Sex is an incredibly intimate act, and I fear the push for more thorough education will have certain conservatives and religious individuals thinking schools are trying to corrupt their children. The goal, however, is to keep them safe, and that is why educating them about all aspects of sex is extremely important.