Should sex education be taught in schools?

Encyclopedia of Opinion

Question: Should sex education be taught in schools?
Position‹2 of 2: Yes, sex education should be taught in schools
Argument‹5 of 7›: Sex education promotes healthy living

We teach the importance of exercise, a healthy diet, and good oral hygiene in schools. Why wouldn't we also teach good practices for sexual health?

The argument

Framed this way, sexual education is a matter of public health rather than of morality, and the reframing does much of the work. The question is not whether adolescents ought to be having sex but whether they will be equipped to avoid disease and infertility. On that question the argument treats the case as settled: students must be informed of the dangers of unprotected sex and of the measures they can take to prevent the spread of sexually transmitted diseases, and school is the institution that reliably reaches all of them. The scale invoked is an epidemic. The US is in the grip of an STD epidemic, with 20 million new STD cases emerging in 15-24-year-olds every year at a cost of around $16 billion annually in healthcare. Those figures carry two separate points. The first is that the burden falls squarely on the age group schools already have in front of them, which is what makes the classroom the right place to intervene rather than a clinic reached later. The second is that the harm is not confined to the individual, since an epidemic on that scale is a collective expense borne by the health system as a whole. That is the sense in which this is public health and not private conduct. The harm to the individual also outlasts a single infection, because sexually transmitted disease poses a major threat to long-term reproductive health, and the consequences of an untreated or unprevented infection can surface years later. Set against that, the intervention is modest: morality and ethics aside, teaching teens about contraception as part of a comprehensive health programme. Proponents conclude that whatever one's ethical view of adolescent sexuality, failing to provide that teaching leaves students vulnerable to disease and to fertility problems in later life.

Context

Schools already teach children about the importance of a healthy lifestyle. We teach them on the dangers of alcohol and drugs, nutrition, the importance of exercise, and oral hygiene.

Premises

[P1]Schools have a responsibility to promote students' public health and healthy living. [P2] Young people face a major STD epidemic that causes serious health and economic harm. [P3] Sex education equips students with the knowledge of contraception and protection needed to prevent these harms. [C] Therefore, sex education should be taught in schools as part of a comprehensive health program.

Counter-arguments

Sex education is not simply a matter of public health and attempting to teach it in this way is damaging and dangerous to the sexual development of young adults. An amoral approach that teaches sex education as part of a public health program separates human sexuality from its connection with love and emotional affection. This can lead teens to behave in a more promiscuous way. It can also inhibit their ability to detect sexual abuse and identify grooming behaviour. Themes like love, value and admiration must be a central component of any sex education. These, unlike alcohol, tobacco, nutrition and exercise, are not matters related to public health. They are part of the emotional and moral development of a child and therefore fall under the educational purview of the parent, not the school.

Rejecting the premises

[Rejecting P2] Sex education is not a public health matter. It is a moral and ethical matter. [Rejecting P3] Moral and ethical education is the parents' responsibility. Therefore, sex education is the parents' responsibility.