At my high school, sexual education was incorporated into freshman biology. For one week, my teacher shifted her focus from evolution to anatomy: we were given workbook sheets with drawings of the sex organs to label as homework, and we went over the function of these parts during class.
Pictures of sexually transmitted infections were shown, the old abstinence diatribes were given — “the only foolproof way to avoid pregnancy is to not have sex” — and at the end of the week, our curriculum returned to drawing Punnet squares.
The physical act of sex itself was left out of the discussion entirely. There was no information given on what healthy sexual behavior looks like, and relationships — both heterosexual and non-heterosexual — were nowhere to be found in the curriculum. Consent, personal boundaries and other important aspects of having a healthy sexual life also were absent.
This was the only time during my 13 years in the public school system that sex was ever mentioned.
Unfortunately, my experience closely mirrors that of sexual education curricula across the South. In Louisiana, schools are not legally required to teach any form of sex ed.
If a school chooses to educate their students on sexual health, that curriculum must be incorporated into an already required class (such as health or physical education), may not contain sexually explicit materials depicting male or female homosexual activity and must emphasize the importance of abstinence.
Comprehensive sex education should begin as early as possible, but Louisiana makes it illegal for any school to teach sex ed before 6th grade. The sexual education being taught now is painfully ineffective, and comes too late for a vast majority of students.
Reports indicate that more Louisiana teens are sexually active than the national average. The rate of teen pregnancy is Louisiana is also higher than the national average, as is the rate of relationship violence, according to the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services. Louisiana teens are also contracting HIV at a much higher rate than the rest of America’s teenagers.
The only way to address these issues is to introduce more comprehensive sex education into Louisiana schools. By teaching students about all aspects of healthy sexual relationships, the state can greatly reduce the ignorance that leads to unsafe or unhealthy behaviors.
Advocates for comprehensive sex ed believe that this education should begin as early as kindergarten. By starting this discussion as early as possible, teachers can introduce students to important concepts long before they begin engaging in sexual behavior.
This doesn’t mean that elementary school teachers should be detailing sex acts for children. Comprehensive sex ed includes education on all aspects of sexual behavior, including relationships. Early units of this curriculum focus on healthy relationships of all types, and on respecting personal boundaries.
Students should begin to learn in kindergarten what the difference between “good touch” and “bad touch” is. They should be taught that if they ask someone to stop what they’re doing, that person should respect their request — and that if someone asks them to stop doing something, they should stop, even if that person is a friend or a family member.
By teaching children these vitally important concepts, comprehensive sex education has the power to establish the concept of consent in student’s lives early enough that it comes as second-nature to them by the time they begin having sex. It also teaches kids to find and firmly establish their own personal boundaries and to respect the boundaries of others.
Comprehensive sex ed has been proven to succeed where Louisiana’s sex education fails. Advocates for Youth performed a study of multiple comprehensive sex ed programs across the nation.
This study found that comprehensive sexual education programs can increase a delay in the onset of sexual behavior, encourage condom usage and reduce the rate of both unintended teen pregnancy and HIV contraction.
The sex ed I was given should not be the standard. Students should be given the tools to have safe, healthy relationships as early as possible, so that they may avoid dangerous behaviors later in life. The sooner those tools are given to them, the better.
Logan Anderson is a 21 year old mass communication senior from Houston, Texas. Follow her on Twitter @LoganD_Anderson.