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*nudges guild* Wake up wake up wake up!

So, how do you feel about sex education in schools? And just for argument's sake, let's presume we're talking about kids aged at least 12 or 13, up through 17 or 18. My school didn't teach sex ed, so I don't know when it's normally done, I've heard varying reports, but let's just assume that whatever sex education or lackthereof is being done at an age with kids old enough to be concerned with things like puberty and sex.

Do you feel that abstinence-only education is the answer? If so, how do you feel about the statistics that suggest that abstinence-only education doesn't work, and may actually be a contributing factor to teen pregnancies and STI occurrence in teens in areas where it's taught? Are they going about it the wrong way, perhaps?

Do you feel comprehensive sex education that covers safer sex methods, including (but not limited to) abstinence is a better choice? That regardless of your personal views regarding who should be having sex when, young people might benefit from a more expansive sex education?

Do you feel that children should be taught the anatomy of human reproduction, either as a part of sex ed or as something separate?

Do you feel such things should be taught in school at all, or do you feel that such topics are better left up to parents to teach their children according to their own values?

What sort of sex education did you get? Did you find it helpful or valuable in any way, or was it a waste of time? Did your parents talk about puberty and sexual development and have "the sex talk" with you? If so, how did it compare to what you were taught in school?

If you did not receive any sort of sex education either at home or at school, do you feel that you would have been better off having had some sort of sex ed, or has it been a non-issue for you? If you didn't learn about sex and sexual development in school or from your parents, did you learn anything from another source (friends/peers gossiping, an older sibling, the internet, etc.)? If so, how accurate do you feel that information was?

...and anything else that's relevant.

In my city's public schools, kids learn a mixture of sex ed and abstinence ed, and I think that's the way to go. Abstinence is the only method of safe sex that works 100% of the time, after all.

In Catechism we were only taught about the danger of sex and the horror of abortion and were made to sign an abstinence pledge (which were posted for the whole congregation to see). This is also about the time we are urged to consider the holy orders. I guess all that is to be expected in a "Big C" Catholic church, but I'm really not sure what good their scare tactics did. It certainly wore off of me.

Kids that want to have sex are going to have sex. I think they should know how to (and be able to *cough cough* unrestricted birth control) protect themselves so that they can be as safe as possible if sex is something they choose.

Man, I was gearing up for a debate here. I'm a little disappointed. sad

I agree that comprehensive sex education is important. Statistics show, pretty inarguably, that abstinence-only sex ed doesn't keep kids from having sex, it just keeps them from being educated about it and they're liable to believe a lot of ridiculous myths about sex. (Like you can't get pregnant if it's your first time, or that you're preserving your virginity if you only engage in oral and a**l sex, and that there are no dangers in oral or a**l sex, etc.)

And it's definitely important for kids to learn human anatomy, and the reproductive system should be no exception. I also think it's important for kids to be taught about puberty, ideally before or as they're starting to go through it. Just think if you're a girl who has never learned about menstruation, and then one morning she wakes up with her knickers covered in blood. That would be terrifying! Or if you're a boy who never learned that random erections and "wet dreams" are a perfectly normal part of your body transitioning from that of a child to that of an adult.

I don't think it's a school's job to force any one kind of morality on its students, with the exception perhaps of private religious schools. Schools shouldn't encourage students to have sex, but they should at least give students the informational tools to have sex as safely as possible when the students do decide to become sexually active, whether that be tomorrow or ten years from now on their wedding night. It's the job of the parents to teach their children the morals and values they wish them to have, and ideally, I think parents should speak with their children openly and honestly about sex. Sex shouldn't be treated as something that's bad or shameful. In the future, cultivating a healthy sex life with one's spouse is all about honesty and open communication, and that's going to be something that's difficult to achieve if you were raised in an environment where sex was shameful and inappropriate to speak of.

Growing up, I got absolutely no formal sex education. I went to a private Catholic school, and the extent of what we were told about sex was "Don't do it, and contraceptives are the work of the devil." I never got any sort if "sex talk" from either of my parents, and since I was the oldest of my siblings by a fairly significant margin (the next oldest was five years younger than me), I didn't really have a sibling I could talk to or ask questions.

Pretty much everything I learned about sex came from my best friend, and lucky for me, his information was pretty spot-on. I would have believed pretty much anything he told me, so it's a good thing that he knew what he was talking about. The rest I learned just sort of by trial-and-error. I became sexually active fairly young (15), so experience combined with the information from my best friend actually gave me a pretty good sex education, but it would have been a lot less scary and confusing if I'd learned about a lot of it in a classroom first.

I got lucky: it just so happened that my friend actually had a plethora of factual information. But most people aren't so lucky. Most people's friends are just as clueless as they themselves are, and that's why a shocking amount of young people still believe BS like "you can't get pregnant if it's your first time," or "you won't get pregnant if he pulls out."

Kids are going to have sex regardless of how much you tell them not to. Not all kids, obviously, but a pretty good number of them. It's a normal, biological drive that they get unfortunately a good deal earlier than they finish developing intellectually. But just telling them not to do it doesn't work, so regardless of whether you think teens should be having sex or not, it just makes sense to make sure that they have the information they need to be as safe as possible. My partner's son is in the midst of his first serious relationship (as serious as relationships can be when you're a teenager, anyway), and would I feel most comfortable knowing that he wasn't having sex at all? Of course I would, even if it makes me a blatant hypocrite. But if he is having sex, I'd rather he not catch something or become a father before he even enters university. At some point it needs to stop being about how in a perfect world kids wouldn't be having sex before they're adult enough to handle any possible fallout, and start being about harm reduction and damage control.

I'm living proof that being raised in a very sexually conservative environment doesn't work. Teenagers are, by their very nature, horny and rebellious, and while scare tactics may work on a few, it's certainly not the answer for the big picture.