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What readers need to know about the issues surrounding insufficient sexual education:

Kids these days are becoming sexually active at a younger age than before, with "[s]ixty-six percent of
American high school students hav[ing had] sex by their senior year. [1]" This is especially worrying
because the population of Americans under 24 will be the age range to contract "...65 percent of all
sexually transmitted infections, [1]" which shows a correlation between the sexual practices of our
youths and their lack of knowledge in doing so, resulting in a majority of all sexually-transmitted disease
contractions. Possible contributions to this issue of being unknowledgeable on how to maintain one's
sexual health could be due to the fact that "...18 states and the District of Columbia require schools to
provide sex education and 32 do not. [1]", or possibly that eve though we live in a modern and
progressive era, a survey from 2006 to 2010 found that "...70 percent of girls and 61 percent of boys
said they had received some information about birth control methods. But in the later survey period,
those numbers dropped to 60 percent among girls and 55 percent among boys. [3]" That lack of
synchronizing teaching practices could have something to do with the fact that some people believe that
teaching sexual education gives youths the tools to then become sexually active, though "In a study of
35 sex education programs around the world, the World Health Organization found there is no evidence
that comprehensive programs encourage sexual activity.[1]" Recently, "Congress increased to $75
million a year funding for programs that promote sexual abstinence until marriage , even though a
federally funded evaluation shows that they have no impact on delaying sexual initiation or reducing the
risk for unintended pregnancy, HIV or other STDs. [2]" While people are currently fighting to improve (or
even implement for the first time) sex education into public schools, (like
http://www.advocatesforyouth.org/, or http://www.ncsse.com/index.cfm?pageid=928) "...93 percent of
all Americans believe sex education should be taught in high schools, and 84 percent believe it should be
taught in middle or junior high schools, [1]" showing that there's a sizeable of us that agree with that
movement. With that many people in agreement, we should feel more than compelled to aid the
progression, and the sizeable recent decline in quality of the education provided [4] should be a wakeup
call to my readers and show them that this is a very current and pressing issue.

Bibliography:
1. http://www.nbcnews.com/id/3071001/ns/health-childrens_health/t/carnal-knowledge-sex-eddebate/#.VzFXLPkrLIV
2. https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/renew-the-us-commitment-to-sexeducation/2015/05/22/8b86980e-fe53-11e4-833c-a2de05b6b2a4_story.html
3. http://thinkprogress.org/health/2016/04/16/3770108/sex-ed-information-declining/

4.

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