|
Getting your Trinity Audio player ready...
|
Almost 90 percent of parents according to National Institutes of Health study, support some type of sex ed regardless of political affiliation.
Understanding that, the Miami-Dade School Board just reversed its decision to adopt a new sex education textbook (“Comprehensive Health Skills”) for the 2022-23 school year. So if the “parental rights” advocates say it’s a parent’s right to teach sex ed at home, then you better get started now.
YOU CAN RELAX
The decision to remove the textbook leaves the district without any sex-education curriculum for at least four to eight months. I can go on for paragraphs on why it’s a bad decision – but instead I’ll just put your mind at ease with the fact there are so many resources out there for kids.
Hard to find? Nope. As long as they have a cell phone it’s safe to say they already found what they are looking for. Not by accident but on purpose. As if they were on a mission. And better yet, it has already been shared with their friends. And yes, it starts in elementary school.
STOP RELAXING
A disturbing finding by Bitdefender is that children under 10 are increasingly visiting porn mega sites such as Pornhub, and that the average age of first Internet porn exposure is 11 years old. 10 percent of 12 to 13-year-olds believe that they may already be addicted to pornography.
Sadly it’s shaping their ideas about pleasure, power and intimacy. Question is – whether they can be taught to see sexualized content more critically.
Face it, when a child misses out on sexual health education, they are put at an increased risk for sexually transmitted infections (STIs) and unplanned pregnancies. And that’s just the beginning.
By focusing on the potential harms of pornography alone, we may be distracting ourselves from bigger issues. It’s possible we’re missing a host of root causes contributing to dating / sexual violence, a true public health crisis.
It’s a scary thought for parents, but most kids get the bulk of their sex ed from the internet and not even from their friends anymore. Even more worrisome, many kids will have watched sex acts online well before they engage in sexual activity themselves.
As uncomfortable as it may be, parents need to reclaim a bit of their kids’ sex education. If kids grow up thinking that porn represents reality and is not just a job with people acting, they may experience some real problems.
TELEMED WITH DR. GOOGLE
Students say they search online for sexual health information because the relevant education at school is insufficient, or in some school systems, non-existent. They note their parents avoid, refuse, or hand over a URL instead of discussing sex.
Of course, the main reason students hit up search engines is the anonymity, since many searches present potentially embarrassing situations. For example, understanding the symptoms and treatment of sexually transmitted diseases (STDs) is just a quick and painless Google search away.
Lack of sex education may perpetuate flagrant misunderstandings about sexual health and can lead to riskier practices posing tremendous public health threats. However, a huge number of middle-schoolers and teens still do not receive adequate sex education regarding the prevention of unwanted pregnancy, STDs and HIV/AIDS and even how to get condoms.
Sex ed needs to be real regarding healthy relationships, sexual expectations and the typical clinical presentation of what sex is and the related health issues which they might encounter. If not, all sex becomes normalized, women are objectified and sex is consequence-free.
SEX ISN’T NEW, BUT TEACHING IT SHOULD BE
Along with the evolution of updated, real-life teaching, comes the need to reinvent sex ed in the classroom. Rather than focusing on the clinical/biological aspects of sex, we should use this platform to include discussions the way kids see this and talk about in the hallways, classrooms and cafeteria.
If not, they will soon see that sexual activity cannot be paused, fast-forwarded or rewound.
This column is by Ritchie Lucas, Founder of The Student Success Project and Think Factory Consulting. He can be reached at 305-788-4105 or email at ritchie@thinkfactory.com and on Facebook and You Tube as The Student Success Project.
