Sexuality: Education

Types of Programs:
* Comprehensive Sexuality Education: Sexuality education programs that start in kindergarten and continue through 12th grade. These programs include age-appropriate, medically accurate information on a broad set of topics related to sexuality including human development, relationships, decision-making, abstinence, contraception, and disease prevention. They provide students with opportunities for developing skills as well as learning information.
* Abstinence-based: Programs that emphasize the benefits of abstinence. These programs also include information about sexual behavior other than intercourse as well as contraception and disease-prevention methods. These programs are also referred to as abstinence-plus or abstinence-centered.
* Abstinence-only: Programs that emphasize abstinence from all sexual behaviors. These programs do not include information about contraception or disease-prevention methods.
* Abstinence-only-until-marriage: Programs that emphasize abstinence from all sexual behaviors outside of marriage. If contraception or disease-prevention methods are discussed, these programs typically emphasize failure rates. In addition, they often present marriage as the only morally correct context for sexual activity.
* Fear-based: Abstinence-only and abstinence-only-until-marriage programs that are designed to control young people’s sexual behavior by instilling fear, shame, and guilt. These programs rely on negative messages about sexuality, distort information about condoms and STDs, and promote biases based on gender, sexual orientation, marriage, family structure, and pregnancy options. (SEXUALITY Q&A)

What’s Being Taught?:
The exact information in a schools program is mostly determined at the local level. A variety of things may factor into that decision, including community, and type of school. In many cases schools with a religious affiliation may not teach a comprehensive sexual education program. It may be one of the abstinence types of education programs. A study showed that 86% of high schools taught that abstinence was the most effective way to avoid pregnancy and STDs, 82% taught about the risks associated with multiple partners, 77% taught development, 79% covered topics like relationships, 65% taught condom efficacy, 69% covered marriage and commitment, and 39% taught students how to use a condom correctly. (SEXUALITY Q&A)

Advice:
It is good to know what type of curriculum is being taught at the school. In some cases, it might be beneficial to ask during the interview in case there is a strong conflict of interest. In many cases schools ask teachers to back the curriculum that is being taught. It doesn’t hurt to get to know what is being taught in the curriculum as well. By being somewhat familiar about what is being taught, it is possible to know how much information students have, and what they may or may not be aware of.

Resources:
http://www.siecus.org/index.cfm?fuseaction=Page.viewPage&pageId=634&parentID=477
http://www.sexedlibrary.org/lessonplans.html
http://www.sexedlibrary.org/bibliography.html
www.siecus.org