Sexual Education

SEXUAL EDUCATION
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(29 September, 2012)
Sexual Education
This essay criticizes a health a health article titled ‘You`re teaching our kids WHAT?` by Lianne George published in 2009. To start with, sex education described in this article has lots of health implications on especially in Canada. Most adolescent are displaying behaviours as well as developmental characteristics that subject them to various unhealthy issues. Most of them are engaging in sex with the aim of experimenting the sex experiences. However, adolescent sex has lots of health consequences including teenage pregnancy, contacting sexually transmitted diseases, abortion among other risks. All these have been increasing medical burdens to the affected countries. Individuals who have engaged in early sex have higher risks of experiencing secondary infertility as well as development of cervical abnormalities, physical and emotion damages.
As an effect, sex education provides adequate and accurate information as well as concepts concerning sexuality that is very important in ensuring that adolescent individuals are making informed and reasonable decisions concerning their sexual behaviours. This is very important in reducing high health risks associated with early sex. Research by Kirby et al (2002) indicates that children who been given sex education experience a delay in their sexual activities, don`t engage in sexual activities frequently, use contraceptives, the number of sexual partners is less. With this, the number of negative sexual health outcomes is much less, as they are 50% less chances of contacting early pregnancy, leading to low cases of abortion and STD transmissions.
In Canada, the number of teenagers contacting early pregnancy is over 850,000, and most of them ends up aborting, increasing healthy risks in the country. In addition, about 6.1 million youths have contacted sexually transmitted diseases. As an effect, sex education helps Canadian teenagers in making informed decisions, which at the end reduce mortality rates in the country, apart from reducing medical expenses being incurred by the government. This is because informed teenagers have less probability of engaging in unprotected sex as they are acquainted with social skills that enables them to deal with romantic relationships. However, the above stated implications will only be achieved if experienced teachers and experts will be left to handle the subject. This is because, if improperly dealt with, children will be exposed to virginal sex, sadomasochism, masturbation, among other sexual activities to an extent that they want to practice what they have learnt in class. This will render them more susceptible to sexual infections, physical as well as emotional defects in the country.
The article and the information provided in this course deals with informed decision making amongst the youths. The information in the course enhance behaviour change, as it encourages giving up of unhealthy habits like smoking, and alcoholism. To achieve this, there is need for informed decision. In line with this, the article explains the need for informed decision on issues concerning sexual behaviour change amongst youths. The course material and the article explain cognitive behaviour change that promotes health standards in the society. They all aim at explaining the need for social skills as well as the methods that can used to facilitate the development of health behaviours among adolescent individuals. According to the article, there is need for experts to deliver sex education information, just like there is need for expert to deliver the information found in the course material. This is because the information is evidence-based, hence there are cultural and policy constrains that might affect the program facilitation.
Based on the fact that the course aims at understanding health education, the article fits in this context as sex education a subset of health education. The course explains about infectious diseases along with physical and emotional defects, through human behaviours, sex is also a human behaviour and can result to various tremendous infectious diseases, emotional and physical defects. Moreover sex education fits in health education context in such a manner that effective health education helps people in adopting healthy behaviours, which is the main objective of health education course.
Just like other articles, this article posse some strength as well as weaknesses. For instance, the article was published in 2009, meaning the information in the article is still up-to-date. It is based on the latest information other than outdated information. Moreover, it is in 2009 when sex education topic hit many debates worldwide as stated by Grossman (2009). This implies that the article was published at the time the information about sex education was highly needed to aid those engaging in sex educatio...