Condoms in the Classrooms
Argumentative Paper
Condoms in the Classroom
A few years ago, I found out my fourteen-year-old cousin had gotten an eleven-year-old girl pregnant. Both of them went to the same middle school where no sex education was taught. Neither one of them knew the risks and consequences of having unprotected sex. Now, at seventeen years old, he has a three-year-old daughter, has dropped out of high school to help support her, and is in a custody battle with the mother and her parents. At seventeen, my best friend found out she was pregnant. She went to a private Catholic high school, where again, no sexual education was taught. I remember her telling me she didn’t think she could get pregnant because her monthly cycle had just ended. In reality, girls are more likely to get pregnant around 10-14 days after their cycle is over, because that is when the new egg is released from the ovary. Had she taken a health class where sex education was taught, she might have known this.
I remember being in high school and girls talking about how you can get pregnant if you make out in a hot tub or pool, that you can’t get pregnant if the boy pulls out before ejaculating, and that “Max” said he never slept with anyone before, so “Mary” doesn’t understand how she got Herpes. I learned in middle school that making out does not get you pregnant, that sex without a condom will lead to pregnancy or STDs, that just because he pulled out before ejaculating, the strongest sperm are actually released before ejaculation, and boys lie. Leaving it up to the parents to teach this stuff isn’t an option. Kids need to be educated to make smart choices, and it should be happening in middle school when kids are most likely to start experimenting and begin being pressured to have sex.
During the Bush Administration, Congress stopped funding comprehensive sexual educational and put more money towards abstinence only programs. In 2010, almost 370,000 babies were born to girls between the ages of 15 and 19 (1). Scientific research has shown that abstinence only programs do not delay sex among teenagers or prevent HIV/AIDS, sexually transmitted diseases, or unplanned pregnancies. Unprotected sex among youth results in nearly four million STDs each year, many with serious long-term consequences (2). Every year, around 10,000 new cases of HIV infections are reported, and the majorities are young people under the age of 22. With all this information, some school districts are still siding with abstinence only programs, even after the Obama Administration had changed Congress to allocate more money to comprehensive sexual education in schools. Abstinence only programs just don’t work. With so many young adults having sex at earlier ages, we need to be teaching our children the way the human reproductive system works, and the consequences of unprotected sex. Without that knowledge, our children