Public school sexual education programs may include some necessary information, but often fall short when it comes to comprehensiveness.

I think public school sex education "doesn’t work" in the sense that there very few complete and comprehensive sex ed programs out there. Private school sex education (at least at religious institutions) probably deserves a whole separate conversation.

But, even though public schools are not restricted by religious values/funding as some private institutions are, their sexual education programs are still lacking. The American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists committee opinion no. 678 outlines what they believe would be included in a comprehensive and effective sex-ed program. Just in the abstract, this document claims: "Current sexuality education programs vary widely in the accuracy of content, emphasis, and effectiveness. Data have shown that not all programs are equally effective for all ages, races and ethnicities, socioeconomic groups, and geographic areas.” It continues on to suggest that all sex ed programs should include the following:

• Medical accuracy and age-appropriateness
• Benefits of abstaining from sex AND the benefits of contraception to prevent unwanted pregnancies and STI’s
• Forms of sexual expression, healthy sexual/nonsexual relationships, gender identity, sexual orientation and questioning, recognizing and preventing sexual violence, consent, and decision making.

Most, if not all sex-ed programs do not have at least one of the above mentioned factors, with a majority missing necessary information on LGBTQ sex ed, consent, and forms of sexual expression.

If we look at some general statistics for unwanted pregnancies, back in 2011, unintended pregnancy rates per 1,000 women were highest among women who: were aged 18-24 years, had low income, had not completed high school, and were non-Hispanic black or African American. This data corresponds with the claims in ACOG Committee Opinion no. 678. More recently, in 2019, the “healthiest state” in regard to unwanted pregnancies was Vermont, with only 20% of pregnancies reported as unintended. The “unhealthiest” state was Mississippi, with 47.1% of pregnancies reported as unintended. These statistics are significant when we compare them to education gaps between Vermont and Mississippi. In overall education, Vermont ranks #15 in the U.S, whereas Mississippi comes in at #43. There seems then to be a direct link between quality of education (which would include sex ed) and complications in life such as unwanted pregnancies.

In an ideal world, every school would re-assess their sex ed programs to include not only the most medically accurate information, but the most inclusive despite religious or moral values that may say otherwise. It simply comes down to a matter of safety and education in order to protect the younger generation from thing such as STI’s, assault, and unwanted pregnancies.

Sex Ed in schools can be a wonderful thing. Students need to learn about the basic facts, as well as pregnancy, safe sex, STIs, and what a healthy consensual relationship looks like. Unfortunately too often this is not what sex Ed looks like I’m our schools. Current sex Ed curriculum can vary widely and far too often focuses on abstinence only or misguided ideas of purity. If a school offers it at all.

In the UK, Sex education was brought in to reduce the rate of illegitimate births. In 1963 it was trialled in Norwich because that city had a rate of 7.7% when the rest of the country had 5.5%. It was then phased in across the country. Now that figure is about 50%, so ostensibly it has actually significantly raised the rates of illegitimate births which was the reason it was introduced in the first place. It clearly didn't work for the original intended purpose.

To be fully transparent, the people who are sited for sex Ed Is a guy named kinsy, you can look him up but the short version his research involved the prison population and from that population he interviewed sex offenders and then said they are reflective of the entire United States. He also had a habit of taking naked pictures of the "test subjects" and his staff, some of the test subjects were underage children. So most sex Ed should fall to the parents, the very basic idea or two people doing the dirty tango is okay to be taught, but anything else is the parents