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 they’ve 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 called “comprehensive”

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 that “abstinence”

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

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