The bell rings and the students settle down, waiting impatiently for class to start. "This course," begins the quivering voice of the teacher, "will cover the topic of sex." Students giggle nervously around the room.
The question is no longer should sex education be taught, but rather how should it be taught. Over 93% of all public high schools currently offer courses on sexuality or HIV.(1) More than 510 junior or senior high schools have school-linked health clinics, and more than 300 schools make condoms available on campus. The question now is are these programs effective, and if not, how can we make them better?
Kids need the right information to help protect themselves. The US has more than double the teenage pregnancy rate of any western industrialized country, with more than a million teenagers becoming pregnant each year.(2) Teenagers have the highest rates of sexually transmitted diseases (STDs) of any age group, with one in four young people contracting an STD by the......
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Approximate Pages: 4 (260 words per double-spaced page) |