Sexual education is a difficult subject for many.
Trying to teach students before they start experimenting on their own and after they’ve reached the right maturity to handle it is a fine balance indeed. While we have been trying for some time to find the right age to teach it, places like China and New York have recently put new programs in place.
First of all, though, we have to address the weird relationship we have as a country when it relates to sex.
As we saw last week from fellow columnist Gabie Bacques’ article and the subsequent responses it received, sex is an important, yet controversial part of our society. Whether for fun, for emotional reasons or simply for procreation, it’s impossible to deny how prevalent it is in our lives.
Sexual imagery has deeply ingrained itself within many different types of media in our country, whether it’s on television, in movies or plastered everywhere we go in the form of advertisements. With all of this sort of imagery around us, it’s very hard to ignore it.
While this is going on, we also have adults who refuse to truthfully talk to those most impressionable by their surroundings — children  — about what it is they’re seeing. Abstinence-only education may be a good idea in theory, but it just doesn’t translate well into reality.
Look at states like Texas, which receives the most federal abstinence-only funds. When questioned about whether or not the policy works in Oct. 2010, Gov. Rick Perry stressed it does, and showed he vehemently supports it.
Unfortunately though, reality doesn’t care how much someone like Rick Perry may believe in something — Texas had the fourth-highest teen pregnancy rate in the country in a 2005 study, with 88 out of 1,000 girls between the ages of 15 and 19 being pregnant.
Clearly, the system works.
Across the world in the Henan Province of China, a kindergarten in the province’s capital of Zhengzhou is letting kids play with sex education dolls. Meant to help the kids become more familiar with their bodies, as well as those of the opposite gender, these dolls help to educate kids on what most children become curious about at some point in time.
Additionally, in Beijing, a new sexual education curriculum is being tested, where kids as young as six will start to learn about sexuality. In both of these cases, the new programs and classes are being tested in an attempt to help curb China’s teen pregnancy situation.
In 2007 and 2008, China saw 7.6 and 9.2 million reported abortions, respectively, though the real numbers have been estimated as high as 13 million.
Closer to home, we have New York, where mandatory sexual education classes are being put into place in New York City public schools. Placed in both middle and high schools, the classes will discuss a myriad of topics relating to sex, such as how to use a condom and when is the appropriate age for sexual activity.
As with the new programs in China, the new classes in New York City aim to get kids while they are young, and curb some of their curiosity so they can wait until they are older to experiment.
Unsurprisingly, there was backlash from both parents and the Vatican, with complaints varying from the kids being too young, it not being the school’s place to teach it or the program not dealing with the bigger societal issue.
While these arguments may hold some merit, time will tell whether these new attempts in both China and New York will help fix what is becoming a larger and larger problem.
It’s certainly better than doing nothing but closing your eyes and ignoring the problem when faced with the facts, as Rick Perry seems to be doing in Texas.
 
Zachary Davis is 20-year-old history junior from Warsaw, Poland. Follow him on Twitter @TDR_zdavis.
 
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Contact Zachary Davis at [email protected].