NYC public high schools and middle schools are revamping their sex education curriculum, and it’s caused quite a stir.
Some of these new topics include bestiality, anal and oral sex, pornography, phone sex and STD testing. The Department of Education plans to teach anything and everything there is to know about sex.
Some potential assignments under this new curriculum have teens going to local stores and recording brands prices of condoms and lubricants. Another lesson has teens developing a route to a local clinic or facility that provides STD testing and birth control and researching its confidentiality policy.
Some parents worry that this expanded curriculum takes sex education too far and possibly encourages sexual behaviors. Others realize that sex is out there, and their kids will learn about it one way or another.
To all the critics, consider this: one in four teen girls has an STD, according to the CDC. Teaching our youth about sex and safe sex practices, such as STD testing and birth control, is critical to their health. Expanding the sex ed spectrum to include all facets of sex and sexuality—even better.
Frankly, these lessons and new curriculum sound like valuable, real-life experience. Educating our youth on how to prevent unplanned pregnancies through condoms and birth control, and promoting STD and HIV testing is as important as math, science or English. If high school is supposed to prepare our youth for the real world, they deserve real world education.
But upon graduating from high school, not all students will be practicing what they learned in their high school calculus or physics class or reciting Shakespeare poems from English lessons. On the other hand, the vast majority will be having sex, and we can only hope they obtained the knowledge to practice safe sex during those formative years.
Source: huffingtonpost.com/2011/10/24/public-school-sex-ed-class-could-teach-on-oral-sex-and-bestiality_n_1028670.html
