With the increasing number of sexual encounters among adolescents at an early age and the saturation of sex in all major media channels, sex education is becoming an important part of the education system that can prepare young people to better understand sex and promote responsible sex behaviors. However, sex education is not mandatory in the United States on the federal level, so each state is required to develop its own policies concerning sex education (Weaver, Smith & Kippax, 2005, p. 176). The lack of laws regulating sex education on a federal level can lead to many problems with sex education, but the lack of common standards, inconsistency of teaching approaches with sexuality-related trends in the world, and the failure to involve experts are the most important problems of sex education in the United States.
The first problem of sex education in the United States is the lack of core learning standards because the subject is not mandatory for all states on a federal level. In contrast, all states in Australia accepted national policy guidelines for teaching students in secondary education about risks associated with sex, as well as the knowledge and skills required to accept their own sexuality and the sexual diversity of all people (Weaver, Smith & Kippax, 2005, p. 176). Although the ability to freely design the curriculum is an advantage when schools want to plan specific learning objectives and topics depending on the students’ interests, the lack of common standards allows institutions and individuals to impose their own beliefs on others.
Second, the current sex education system is not consistent with the trend of the increasing variety of sex behaviors and the decreasing age of first sexual encounters among adolescents, so students might fail to develop responsible and safe sex behaviors, as well as tolerance and respect for different groups that are often marginalized because of their sexuality. According to Foucault (1990, p. 107), sex in Europe was defined as a source of evil in order to encourage people to repress their sexuality and reduce sex to a reproductive activity. That is why sex remains taboo in some groups of contemporary society, which stems from European traditions. However, the maintenance of traditional attitudes and beliefs about sexuality through abstinence-only sex education programs in school does not teach students that they should develop tolerance and respect towards people with different sexual identities or preferences. In contrast the Netherlands is a good example of how sex education aims need to be formulated so that students can function in a diverse society that is saturated with sexuality. The common goal of all sex education programs in the Netherlands is to “non-judgmenentally equip students with a capacity to behave responsibly if they decide to have sex and to be able to identify safe and unsafe sexual practices” (Weaver et al., 2005, p. 175).
The third major problem associated with sex education in the United States is fact that schools often fail to include multiple organizations and individuals in the sex education process. For example, the school-based sex education programs in the Netherlands provide sex-education materials for parents, family doctors, clinicians, and the media so that they can all have a positive influence on the sex education of children. However, the United States education system usually provides abstinence-only programs, possibly because the system caters to the overprotective parenting styles implemented in contemporary families (Coleman, 2015, p. 392). The efforts to protect children from the negative effects of risky sex behaviors through abstinence-only programs is inadequate, and comprehensive programs like the ones in the Netherlands are necessary because students will receive information about sex from multiple sources.
According to Weaver et al. (2005, pp. 175-176) sex education in France and Australia became more comprehensive only after the emergence of acquired immune deficiency syndrome epidemics in the late 1980s. Even though developing more comprehensive sex education approaches for schools in the United States was recommended, abstinence education is the most common approach in sex education (Weaver et al., 2005, p. 177). Therefore, it is possible to suggest that students who receive sex education in the United States are not prepared to responsibly behave in modern society, which is characterized by increased pre-marital sex encounters and problems of venereal disease transmission. A more comprehensive sex education, which was established in countries like the Netherlands, Australia, and France, might benefit society in the United States.
References
Coleman, J. (2015). Parenting adult children in the twenty-first century. In: B. J. Risman & V. Rutter (Eds.), Families as they really are (2nd ed.). New York, NY: W. W. Norton & Company.
Foucault, M. (1990). The history of sexuality, vol. 1: An introduction. (R. Hurley, Trans.). New York, NY: Pantheon Books.
Weaver, H., Smith, G., & Kippax, S. (2005). School‐based sex education policies and indicators of sexual health among young people: A comparison of the Netherlands, France, Australia and the United States. Sex Education, 5(2), 171-188.
