Why Sex Education Should Be Compulsory
When was the last time you learn math? Unless you’re an engineer or scientist, I would bet it was the awful class in high school. Imagine if your parents could have opted you out of that. What if they could have just signed a sheet of paper and exempted you from math? Well, as difficult and horrible as math is, it’s still important. Maybe you don’t use it every day, but sometimes it is useful, so is sex education. Even if you don’t plan to be sexually active, that doesn’t mean that you shouldn’t learn about sex or other topics about sex, such as anatomy, contraceptives, etc. Sex education is just as important as math, or even more important because you will need it more in life than math. Comprehensive and medically accurate sex education should be compulsory, especially for the younger generation.
Sex is a natural part of life, and it happens with or without sex education. A 2015 study found that about 40% of Chinese undergraduates have had the first intercourse in sixteen to eighteen. The finding also indicated that over the past three decades, more young Chinese are doing it, with more partners, at a younger age. What’s striking was that nearly 40% of undergraduates accept booty call. However, many of them lack sex education and seldom use condoms, which means they are not protecting themselves. As a result, abortion rates and sexually transmitted diseases are on the rise.
In China, most parents seldom talk with their children about sex, no wonder some teenagers even think that they emerged from a rock. For most Chinese parents, sex education seems to be a distraction from studies, so they can take their children out for no reason at all. Meanwhile, I am all for religious freedom, but religious abstinence can hardly be the reason for students not receiving sex education. It’s important that teenagers get all the information they can, and then make a decision about their own values. Don’t let religion or family values be a reason to let students be taken out of sexual health education. Don’t let morals obstruct children’s learning.
Let’s recall math class once more. Everything you learned was factual information. But what if that wasn’t the case? What if your teacher wasn’t obligated to teach accurate information? Unfortunately, this is the case for sex education in our country. Most of what is taught are substandard, and many teenagers fail to find a concrete solution by learning anatomy only in schools. Sex education is important. It’s been proven time and time again. As a matter of fact, students who receive sex education in schools are shown to first have intercourse later than students who have not had sex education. Sex education does not encourage teenagers to have sex, on the contrary, it encourages students to think twice before they do.
All in all, sex education should be compulsory and be incorporated into schooling. Besides, sex education should be comprehensive, medically accurate, and taught throughout student’s school years, just like math. Not only is having access to sex education a human right, but also our fundamental duty as a society to educate the next generation.
