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  • 9th grade is always awkward. Get pimples, braces, andthe talk”.

  • Hey everyone, Julia here for DNews. Health class get super awkward in high school.

  • Where they talk about sex and stuff. But A 2011 Centers

  • for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) survey indicates that more than 47 percent of all

  • high school students say theyve had sex. So sex ed isn’t going away anytime soon.

  • In fact, it’s actually a good thing.

  • One study published in the Journal of Adolescent Health found that students who have any kind

  • of sex ed wait longer to have sex, and when they do, they are more likely to use contraception.

  • So people want it. One poll by NPR, and the Kaiser Family Foundation,

  • Harvard's Kennedy School of Government found that 93 percent of Americans agree that

  • sex education should be taught in schools.

  • But there’s a debate on what kind of sex ed is best. Currently federal funding goes

  • towards two main types of programs. The vast majority of federal funding for sex ed programs,

  • go towards what is called abstinence only programs. These programs teach that the only

  • safe sex is not having it and emphasize that waiting till marriage is the best way. When they

  • do mention contraception, it’s typically to show how often it fails. This type of sex ed grew

  • in popularity throughout the early 2000s. Funding for abstinence-only programs

  • increased from $9 million in 1997 to $176 million in 2007.

  • But more recently, in 2010, funding was also put towards what’s calledcomprehensive

  • sex ed. This can also emphasize waiting to have sex, but it also talks about how to keep

  • yourself safe. Like how to use a condom, what birth control options are out there.

  • That kind of thing. Who gets what sex ed, is really left up to the states.

  • And there it get super confusing. Only 22 states

  • mandate any kind of sex education, 18 states and the District of Columbia require that

  • information on contraception be provided. 37 states require that information on abstinence

  • be provided. And even fewer—13—require that instruction be medically accurate.

  • So which works better? How do we define better?

  • A successful sex ed program might be defined as one that lowers pregnancy and STI rates.

  • So a look at the literature on abstinence only programs finds some misunderstandings.

  • One study from researchers at the University of Washington found thatabstinence

  • meant different things to adults than it meant to the students. The intent of the abstinence

  • programs was to set up a dichotomy with any kind of sexual activity on one hand and total

  • abstinence on the other. For kids, the lines got a little blurrier. The researchers said

  • that students were on an escalator. “the first step is abstinence. Then as they begin

  • to be aware of sex, there are other steps and choices to be made that eventually lead

  • to having intercourse.”

  • So it’s not surprising that one review by the US Department of Health and Human Services

  • found that none of the individual abstinence programs they reviewed had statistically significant

  • impacts on the rate of sexual abstinence. So basically teens were having sex whether

  • or not they were taught abstinence.

  • At the same time, teens are having sex, they aren’t using protection. One study by Columbia

  • University's Mailman School of Public Health found that from 2003-2007 contraception use

  • declined. The researchers think it might be the result of abstinence only programs which

  • don’t mention contraception unless it’s to talk about how often it fails.

  • So teens have sex, without protection, and with sex sometimes comes serious consequences.

  • One study in PLOS One found a link between abstinence-only programs and teen pregnancy.

  • Basically, states that emphasized abstinence only policies had a higher teen pregnancy rate.

  • The researchers concluded that comprehensive sex ed or STI education that includes

  • abstinence as the best way to go was correlated with the lowest teen pregnancy rates.

  • And a lot of other developed nations provide comprehensive sex ed and have low rates of

  • teen pregnancy. To learn more about how other countries teach sex to their teenagers, check

  • out this great video from TestTube.

  • Europe's low teens birth rate has been partially attributed to progressive sexual education.

  • one researcher found that in Netherlands parents and teachers focus less on

  • the "dangers of sex" and more on the normal positive aspects.

  • Alright so the question is, what was your sex ed class like?

  • Tell us your story down in the comments below

  • Hit those like and subscribe buttons so you don’t miss a single episode of DNews.

9th grade is always awkward. Get pimples, braces, andthe talk”.

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