I have not had sex.
As a high school senior, that fact often makes me feel like an anomaly. Many teenagers are having sex; that cannot be denied. It’s unfortunate, then, that they aren’t given the tools to make better decisions about when to have sex and how to handle the consequences.
Teenage sex is society’s pink elephant. While everyone knows it’s there, no one wants to discuss it – but it is not going away.
According to a 2003 survey by National Public Radio, the Kaiser Family Foundation and Harvard University’s John F. Kennedy School of Government, 30 percent of schools teaching sex education focus on abstinence only. The thought behind this seems to be that if students are unaware of sex, they will not have it.
Yet teens are still aware enough about sex that some high schools have day-care centers. Teens are aware enough that “one in four sexually active teens contracts an STD every year,” the Kaiser Foundation reported this year.
In Colorado, the percentage of students (excluding Denver) in 1995 who had had sex was approximately 46.6 percent, according to the Centers for Disease Control.
The Kaiser Foundation, meanwhile, in 2003 reported that 47 percent of ninth- to 12-graders nationwide had already had sex.
That’s a lot of teens taking risks, many of whom don’t have the information necessary to protect themselves.
While there is not a one-size-fits-all solution, education is the strongest tool society has for helping teens deal with the physical and emotional repercussions of sex. This may mean starting sex education in elementary school. (Another Kaiser Foundation study in 2002 found that 6 percent of girls and 8 percent of boys had initiated sexual intercourse before the age of 14.)
Part of the problem is the mixed message that students receive starting in early childhood. Sex is everywhere, and children are exposed to it daily. Sex is at the newsstands, on TV and on the sides of buses.
At school, students are taught about abstinence. At night, they watch “Sex and the City.”
Parents and educators have to be aware of this. Sex in the media is not going to go away.
The solution to this mixed message must therefore start at home, where parents can explain the consequences and joys of relationships starting at a young age. As kids grow, so should the details and frequency of the discussions.
However, sex education should also take place in the classroom, as part of a balanced curriculum, and must begin before hormones start to impede judgment. It then should continue into high school, giving students more information as they age, to help them to deal with new pressures and hormones.
Sex education needs to include not just the physical aspects – contraception, sexually transmitted diseases and pregnancy – but also the emotional aspects.
Knowing about the dangers of sex will probably not help every teenager just say “no.” The hormonal and social pressures of high school are not generally conducive to that. Dating in high school and even middle school is huge.
However, knowing how to avoid STDs and pregnancy would go a long way toward keeping students healthy and reducing welfare claims of unwed teenage mothers. At St. Mary’s Hospital in Grand Junction, more than 50 percent of births in 2004 were to mothers on Medicaid.
Only 7 percent of Americans believe that sex education should not be taught in school, according to the NPR-Kaiser-Harvard poll. Isn’t it odd that students are endlessly warned of the dangers of drugs, but not the dangers of sex?
Sex education is not about politics; it is about common sense. Even if parents do not want their child learning about sex, what about other students who have not had the same moral upbringing and parental support to make good decisions? If a child does make a bad decision, should they not at least be informed about the consequences?
It is time for the elephant to become visible. Sex needs to be discussed frankly and openly so that children no longer get mixed messages and can make smart decisions with their bodies and their futures.
Kathryn Chinn is a senior at Grand Junction High School.
