Professional Documents
Culture Documents
Students
Synthesis Essay: Ashkan
Sexual education in schools containing adolescents has been a controversial topic around the
world, most likely due to the lack of a common ground. We must first define what we mean by
beneficial to students before evaluating the different styles of sexual education. For the sake of the
argument, we will define beneficial in terms of psychological health and in terms of physical wellbeing. Using this common ground, a comprehensive sexual education that includes information about
protection is, in fact, beneficial to students.
It is easy to assume that abstinence-only education is psychologically beneficial to the youth
because adolescents have the highest age-specific risk for many STIs, and the highest age-specific
proportion of unintended pregnancy in the United States, but the fact of the matter is that as
studies suggest, sexual activity is a consequence of pre-existing mental health problems(Santelli
& Others). Instead of being taught to abstain from sex which could lead to the mental health
problems being conveyed in a different fashion it would be more beneficial to the students if they
were given counselling or even therapy sessions to help relay their adverse childhood experiences
in a safer fashion (Santelli & Others). A comprehensive sexual education would be beneficial to the
students when compared to an abstinence-only education in this scenario, since at least the students
would be engaging in sexual activity in a much safer manner as exemplified by a 2007 study
congress ordered [which] found that middle school students who had received abstinence-only
education were just as likely to have sex as teenagers as those who had not...the teens who had
taken abstinence classes were more likely to say that condoms were ineffective in protecting people
against STIs(Valenti). Therefore not only does abstinence-only education not have an impact on
adolescents decisions regarding the engagement in sexual activity, it has adverse effects on
students knowledge regarding sexual activity. This incorrect knowledge has the potential to cause
physical damage to the youth since their chances of obtaining an STI is much higher when condoms
are not used.
The abstinence-only programs raise a psychological concern since these programs promote
abstinence behaviour through emotion, such as romantic notions of marriage, moralizing, fear of
STDs, and by spreading scientifically incorrect information, as made clear by a congressional
committee report [which] found evidence of major errors and distortions of public health information
in common abstinence-only curricula(Stanger-Hall and Hall). Abstinence-only education involves a
heavy appeal to ethos and is characterized by the withholding of information and is ethically
flawed: educating adolescents while neglecting logic is entirely unethical since it would fall under the
category of manipulation (Stanger-Hall and Hall). By fooling the students into believing abstinence
is healthy, the more intuitive students faith in education is placed in jeopardy, however, not only are
we lying to [the children], were also robbing them of the joy that a healthy sex life can provide
(Valenti). This joy can be both psychologically beneficial to the adolescents as well as physically
beneficial to their development. You may argue that it is better to raise educational scepticism as it
will lead to students questioning their beliefs and it will cause students to be more aware of logical
flaws, which would be psychologically beneficial to students since they would be developing
reasoning skills. However, it would be much more ethical and much more helpful if students were
simply taught about logical fallacies rather than be forced to realize one or else be subjected to
learning distortions of public health information (Stanger-Hall and Hall).
If we want to have a beneficial impact on students through sexual education, the only ethical
way to do it is through a fully comprehensive sexual education. The youth will then at least have the