New sexual education recommendations encourage teachers to start talking about sex early on. Do you agree with the guidelines?
WEDNESDAY, Jan. 11, 2012 — Should second-graders be taught how to say “no” if someone is touching them inappropriately? Should third graders learn the functions of all the male and female body parts? And should sixth graders have open conversations in the classroom about gender identity and sexual orientation?
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According to a new proposal for a national sexual education standard, yes.
The National Sexuality Education Standards: Core Content and Skills, K-12 is a thick, exhaustive report that was released this week by a coalition of health and education groups, such as the American Association Health Education (AAHE) and Sexuality Information and Education Council of the U.S. (SEICUS), in order to “provide clear, consistent and straightforward guidance on the essential minimum, core content for sexuality education that is developmentally and age-appropriate.” In other words, to send a wake-up call to teachers and school administrators that children should be talking about sex, even as early as kindergarten.
Currently, there are no standards, and the average student spends a little more than 17 hours over his pre-college academic lifetime learning about sexual health (including information on preventing STDs, HIV, and pregnancy), according to a study from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention’s Division of Adolescent School Health — about 3 of those hours take place in elementary school, about 6 occur in middle school, and about 8 happen in high school.
And that’s not enough, says the coalition, who also believes we need to address the inconsistency of such sensitive topics in schools across the nation. So to determine what is enough, the group tapped about 40 leaders in public health, sex education, and public policy to come up with set guidelines for topics such as anatomy, puberty, identity, STDs, HIV, personal safety, and healthy relationships.
Here’s a quick glimpse at what they’ve proposed: By the time a student graduates the second grade, she should be able to use the proper names for all body parts and explain that all living things reproduce (bye-bye, stork). By the time she leaves the fifth grade, she should be adept in how puberty prepares the body for the potential to reproduce, as well as understand how HIV is transmitted. Once she is an eighth-grade graduate, she should be able to grasp the concept of gender roles, understand the purpose of emergency contraception, and be taught about abstinence. And after the 12th grade, she should be able to correctly describe the step-by-step process of using a condom.
While it’s unclear whether teachers and schools will pay much attention to the guidelines, they are already being met with mixed reviews.
"The data points that trying to cover this stuff when kids have already formulated their own opinions and biases by the time they're in middle and high school, it's too late," Cora Collette Breuner, a pediatrics professor at the University of Washington, told the Associated Press, praising the proposal for getting students to start talking about sex early on.
But not everyone feels warmly about the guidelines: "Controversial topics are best reserved for conversations between parent and child, not in the classroom," objected Valerie Huber, executive director of the National Education Abstinence Association.
What do you think? Should there be a sex-ed standard in this country? Should kids be learning about sex in elementary school? Tell us in the comments section below.