Sex Education

In the early 20th century, schooling played an increasingly large role in the lives of growing numbers of American children and adolescents, and the scope of curricula widened accordingly. Compulsory education and child-labor laws brought unprecedented numbers of children into the schoolhouse, and Deweyite notions of educating the “whole child” expanded the purview of curriculum to address vocational and broader developmental questions. The presence of these children, often hailing from working-class ethnic families with unfamiliar social customs, the concurrent “invention” by influential psychologist G. Stanley Hall of “adolescence” as a sexually fraught and even perilous time, and this expanded pedagogical purpose, gave rise to the first sex education curricula. (Bailey, p. 1)

Over the course of the 20th century, sex education became a contested but consistent feature in the American schoolhouse, its emphasis evolving from social hygiene; to courtship, marriage, and the family more broadly; to comprehensive programs including homosexuality and contraception; to the most recent curricula that teach abstinence from sexual activity as adolescents' only reliable recourse against pregnancy and sexually transmitted disease. Unlike many contemporary education initiatives that rely primarily on federal support, sex education has largely emerged from local, state, and private impetus. For this reason, this controversial curricular question proves a rich site from which to explore the reformist impulses that animate everyday citizens to engage passionately in the construction—and often dismantling—of educational policy and practice. (Carter, p. 5)

The role of sex education is to generate awareness among children and adolescents of respect for their own bodies and teach ways to care for and protect themselves. Modern health policies, driven by most states, pose an effective method for prevention rather than cure or treatment. So, people should know that how they should care and be properly informed of contracting sexually transmitted diseases as well as how to avoid unwanted pregnancy. They should also learn to choose freely that how they want to exercise their sexuality.

In this regard, in addition to information provided by parents, young people are informed through school programs and public health campaigns promoted by governments. But statistics show that, year after year, the age of sexual debut is lower, which increases the number of abortions and teen pregnancy. The reason behind this unwanted increase in pregnancy is the sexual desire which young people possess more as compared to adult ones. Therefore, education should be provided to these young people that how they can control their desires towards sex, although the outcomes of this unwanted sex should also be a part of their education. (Freeman, p. 45)

Proper sex education is based on emphasizing the positive and negative features of compensation of male or female psycho-physiological constitution of natural temperament. Differentiated individual education of boys and girls in accordance with the ideals of masculinity and femininity based on the division of family roles between mother and father should be provided to young people. Basis of sex education is a personal example of parents who observed the actions and utterances of child every day. (Irvine, p. 120)

The effectiveness of sex education depends on the account of gender-related characteristics ...