Sex Education - Assignment Example

Sex Education Sex Education There are multiple social issues that concern people from all around the world like birth control, early pregnancies, negative relationship dynamics, sexism and homophobia. All these social problems trace to a simple lack of sex education among modern generation of people. It turns out that these issues could have been resolved by people themselves, if only they had more advanced knowledge on the matter of sexuality, relationships, and their sexual identities; which is why sex education should be brought back to school curriculums in order to form right understanding of the issues and prevent them from happening. Sex education is a special educational process that helps young people to form adequate beliefs and attitudes towards their sexual identities, relationships, and intimacy. The education aims to teach youth how to make right informed choices concerning sexual and relationship issues and makes them aware of possible outcomes of their choices (Buston, Wight & Scott, 2001). The information that is supposed to be presented within the scopes of sex educational process must contain the following items: sexual development and reproduction, means of contraception and other information about birth control, relationship dynamics and norms, and different kinds of sexuality (Mueller, Gavin & Kulkarni, 2008). It is difficult to say which aspect of sex education is the most needed for nowadays society, as all of them concern the most problematic personal issues that appear among people of all countries. First of all, it is important to say that sex education plays crucial role for the society in general, because it has the goal to reduce the rates of early pregnancies which may lead to increase in the quantity of abandoned children, and also it prevents expansion of such dangerous sexually transmitted diseases like AIDS and HIV (UNICEF, 2002). Being aware of the possible outcomes of unprotected sex makes young people more attentive concerning their sexual relations; moreover, apart from becoming conscious of the means of contraception, they may even refuse having early sex and be more careful in relationships in general. The point is that, according to some psychological researches, the roots of understanding of the concept of sexuality and formation of sexual identity happens in childhood, when a person observes one’s environment and comes up to certain understanding of sex. This knowledge affects the entire life of the person, as it becomes difficult to teach the person on the matter of right sexual attitude all over again (Sabia, 2006). Hence, there are multiple cases when people suffer from their own sexual choices and attitudes, although they can’t resolve their problems because they are absolutely not aware of what is considered to be normal in this sphere; this happens fro the reason that they simply weren’t taught the right knowledge of sexual behavior in their childhood. It frequently happens that the environment where a child is growing up forms wrong attitudes concerning sexuality and relationships in one’s mind. According to Albert Bandura’s social learning theory, people’s personalities are formed under their observations and learning from the environment where they grow up (Bandura, 1977). Thus, if a person’s family can’t provide one with adequate sex education, it is community’s role to retrain the person and demonstrate one what kind of attitudes and sexual choices are normal. It is obvious that school is the best institution to teach people how to coexist with others within a community by showing them the most acceptable for the society conduct. The personal aspect of the lack of sex education in nowadays society is probably the most commonly problematic. The relationship troubles that many people experience come from lack of sex education and understanding of the essence of normal relationships. The roots of people’s interpersonal problems lie in their wrong self-identification and lack of capability to respect other’s personality and sexual identity. In adolescence teenagers try their first relationships, which in most cases turn into dramas to a great extent. Thus first relationships experience not only comes from wrong sex education in their family environments, but also may enormously traumatize their perception of sexuality and human relations (Buston, Wight & Scott, 2001). Moreover, in the times of highly developed influence of social media, sex education risks to take wrong path, as children have access to the vast amount of information available on the Internet. Thus, some researches on the matter of relation of sex education and media came up with the conclusion that the fact that children have access to pornography proves that the rates of early pregnancies and early sexuality of modern teenagers may come from the information being available (Barak & Fisher, 2001). Indeed, nowadays western culture is extremely based on sex and sexuality, so children get to know sex earlier that it was before. They are aware of such things as homosexuality and how the process of coitus looks like, so it becomes obvious why they decide to experience it as soon as possible; which is a quite harmful tendency, as in such early age they are not informed about all the possible outcomes that may follow the process. Another important issue that has been raised up in all liberal societies of the world concerns sexual identification and people’s right to have one. In order to reduce the rates of homophobia and allow others to choose who they want to be with, people must be taught to respect both their own and others’ sexual identities. Taking into consideration the modern tendencies of sexuality and sexual identity, it is of crucial importance to inform adolescents of them. The society that promotes liberal point of view on free sexual identification is supposed to provide its citizens with proper information on the matter. This is the ideological aspect that liberal societies should work on in order to keep their citizens informed of social standards. Thus, sexual education should obligatory be brought back into school curriculums for multiple reasons. First of all, prevention of the sexually transmitted diseases is a current problematic issue of modern world (UNICEF, 2002). Secondly, children need to be aware of relationship dynamics norms. And the last necessity that sex education should cover is sexual identification and tolerance towards sexual minorities by nowadays youth. References Buston, K., Wight, D. and Scott, S. (2001). Difficulty and Diversity: The Context and Practice of Sex Education. British Journal of Sociology of Education, 22, 353-368. Sabia, J.J. (2006). Does Sex Education Affect Adolescent Sexual Behaviors and Health? Journal of Policy Analysis and Management, 25, 783-802. Barak, A. and Fisher, W.A. (2001). Toward an Internet-Driven, Theoretically-Based, Innovative Approach to Sex Education. The Journal of Sex Research, 38, 324-332. Mueller, T.E., Gavin, L.E., and Kulkarni, A. (2008). The Association Between Sex Education and Youths Engagement in Sexual Intercourse, Age at First Intercourse, and Birth Control Use at First Sex. Journal of Adolescent Health, 42, 89-96. Bandura, A. (1977). Social learning theory. Englewood Cliffs, NJ: Prentice Hall. UNICEF (2002), Lessons Learned about life skills-based education for preventing HIV/AIDS related risk and related discrimination. Read More