Despite what you think, Sex Ed isn’t (shouldn’t be) just condoms on bananas and abstinence pledges.
Sex Ed is:
- how to identify and build healthy relationships
- how to care for your body and the bodies of others you’re trusted to help care for
- how to be comfortable in our identities and sexuality (and with those of others)
- how to discover and nurture your own pleasure
- how to use consent and treat others with respect
It’s the core of being human.
All that means those who teach Sex Ed have a very important (and very difficult role), and the computer-age has only presented new issues and topics to teach and a demand for an accelerated timeline for teaching it.
Everyone has questions and ideas, and without a knowledgeable and safe guide to help them students will quickly seek other, potentially dangerous avenue to get the information they want.
In the bluntest term, Sex Ed is the only subject taught in school where an incomplete or incorrect understanding can lead to physical and emotional harm. Children and adults can get hurt.
That’s why it’s crucial that we emphasize and prioritize complete and well informed Sex Ed curriculum. Why we must put aside our biases and hesitations from the past and allow this subject full room to flourish and do its work.
Sex Ed doesn’t have to be scary and it doesn’t have to be embarrassing. It’s a beautiful subject where the primary focus is making people happy, and helping them make others happy.
And isn’t that what we all really want?