by Meghan Hudson
Sex education has been a controversial topic in schools for many years. Many people feel that is it important for schools to teach sexual education, while others are against it. I believe sex ed is a very important subject to teach as teenagers nowadays are surrounded by sexual activity but uninformed about safety precautions.
Many students are misinformed about sex. Some teenagers believe that if you have sex once you will get pregnant, and this is not true. The average age of first intercourse has been dropping steadily over the years and is currently 17 years old. Nowadays, once children reach high school they believe they have earned a new independence and may start exploring drugs, sex and relationships.
From a young age, children are told that they should wait until marriage to have sex. However, people don’t wait until marriage.From 2011-2013, about 13% of unmarried females had sex before age 15, while about 18% of unmarried men had sex before age 15. It seems intercourse has become less of an important moment and more like a recreation. Children today don’t have respect for sex and believe it’s just something to do and have fun with. This wouldn’t be such a problem if they were properly educated about the risks of having unprotected sex.
There are plenty of pros for sex ed. Sex education provides students with knowledge about safe sex. It should not promote abstinence because that is an opinion, not a rule. If sex ed was taught in school, maybe students would have more respect for the subject.
As a society, why do we make sex out to be so controversial? Honestly, America is like a child- we are very immature as a nation when it comes to sex.
The are also cons to teaching to sex ed in school. Since society has taught us that sex is this crazy thing, we grow up believing it should not be publicly discussed. This could pose a problem in the classes. Students would be too immature, especially the boys since they mature slower than girls. Teachers could also end up relaying their biases on sex to their students.
Sex is inevitable; however, as teenagers, we sometimes feel pressured into it. Sometimes we think that if we have sex we are officially adults. If this is going to be the mindset of some people then we need someone to teach us how to be safe and not just that we will get pregnant and die. I say it’s about time we grow up and teach safe sex. 
(photos from http://www.Huffpost.com and http://www.squarespace.com)
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