By Emily Willingham
Published on Forbes
Dec 23, 2015<\/p>\n\n\n\n
And without fail, a large proportion of my students have limited to no real understanding of what I\u2019m teaching when I begin. They answer questions about the effects of hormonal birth control and reproductive anatomy with mythology instead of facts. They will argue with misinformation they\u2019ve learned in their \u201csex education\u201d classes from high school or, sometimes, church. They frequently look like deer in the headlights.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Most of my students come into college knowing little about their own reproductive systems and how to plan their reproductive and sex lives in informed, evidence-based ways. And the latest findings<\/a> of a U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) report<\/a> indicate that my experience isn\u2019t an anomaly: Our young people are not getting the information they need about their bodies and their behaviors to best manage their decisions and their risks.<\/p>\n\n\n\n The CDC recommends 16 topics that curricula should address for middle-school and high-school students. Based on\u00a0their findings, only about half of U.S. high schools and a fifth of U.S. middle schools manage to teach all 16.<\/p>\n\n\n\n According to the CDC, the topic selection criterion is foremost based on evidence that helps young people avoid risk. Yet in some states\u2014Arizona, you\u2019re one of them\u2014only 20% of high schools teach all 16 of these topics, and in most states, fewer than half of high schools do so. Middle school education is even more dire, with Arizona clocking in at 4% for covering the complete curriculum and no state teaching more than half of the recommended subject areas.<\/p>\n\n\n\n To which I say, here\u2019s a reality check<\/a> in this study\u2019s first table, showing by-state rates of middle schoolers who have ever had sex. In some regions in 2009, one in five sixth-graders reported ever having had sex, with that number nearing a peak of 42% for eight graders in some areas. These values make clear that things haven\u2019t changed much since my own time in a Texas public middle school in the 1970s.<\/p>\n\n\n\n In the meantime, the CDC says that the proportion of all teens who have ever had sex hovers around 60%, with more than a fifth acknowledging use of drugs or alcohol the last time they did so. If that doesn\u2019t identify these young people as a population in need of evidence-based risk prevention education, I don\u2019t know what does.<\/p>\n\n\n\n