This document discusses different approaches to sex education, including abstinence-only education and comprehensive sex education. It notes that comprehensive sex education teaches abstinence as well as other topics like human development, relationships, contraception and disease prevention. The document also outlines some of the pros and cons of providing sex education in schools, such as helping students understand their changing bodies but some teachers lacking expertise. Overall, it argues that sex education is important because it can help delay sexual activity among youth and provide medically accurate information.

1. Radha, Ramila, Rashmi, Rejina
Om health nursing college
Nepal

2. It doesn’t have to be hard- just like a health class.

3. Age Group
Elementary school Middle school High School
To Young Perfect Too late

4. 1. Abstinence only
2. Abstinence plus

5. Adolescents are taught to refrain from engaging in
sexual intercourse, usually until marriage.
This form of sexual education also skips over more in
depth information, such as types of sexual and
reproductive health education, like birth control and
safe sex with protection and contraception.

6. Comprehensive sex education, as the name explains,
teaches abstinence plus additional topics such as
• age-appropriate,
• medically accurate information regarding sexuality,
• human development,
• relationships,
• decision making,
• contraception, and disease prevention/protection.

8. • STD’s are infections that are spread from person to
person through intimate sexual contact.
• STD’s are dangerous because they are easily spread
and it is hard to tell just by looking who has an STD.

9. • Chlamydia
• Gonorrhea
• Genital Herpes (HSV-2)
• Genital Warts (HPV)
• Hepatitis B
• HIV and AIDS
• Pubic Lice
• Syphilis

10. • STDs are very prevalent.
• STDs cost a lot to treat.
• $9 billion spent annually to treat effects of STDs
• STDs, if infected with the worst ones, can seriously harm or
kill you.
• Death toll by AIDS alone is is in the millions worldwide

11. • Abstinence is the best policy
• Use a condom or other barrier method
• If infected, seek treatment-it will cost you less in the long-run
• Use common sense-avoid high risk fetishes.
• Be careful-not everyone is infected.

13. • Sex education is instruction on issues relating to human sexuality, including
emotional relations and responsibilities, human sexual anatomy, sexual
activity, sexual reproduction, age of consent, reproductive health, reproductive
rights, safe sex, birth control and sexual abstinence.
• Sex education that covers all of these aspects is known as comprehensive sex
education. Common avenues for sex education are parents or caregivers, formal
school programs, and public health campaigns.

14. • Characteristics of Effective Sex Education
• Experts have identified critical characteristics of highly effective sex education and HIV/STI prevention
education programs. Such programs:
• Offer age- and culturally appropriate sexual health information in a safe environment for participants;
• Are developed in cooperation with members of the target community, especially young people;
• Assist youth to clarify their individual, family, and community values;
• Assist youth to develop skills in communication, refusal, and negotiation;
• Provide medically accurate information about both abstinence and also contraception, including condoms;
• Have clear goals for preventing HIV, other STIs, and/or teen pregnancy;
• Focus on specific health behaviors related to the goals, with clear messages about these behaviors;
• Address psychosocial risk and protective factors with activities to change each targeted risk and to
promote each protective factor;
• Respect community values and respond to community needs;
• Rely on participatory teaching methods, implemented by trained educators and using all the activities as
designed.

15. • Pros of Sex Education in Schools
• Sex education in schools can help children understand the impact of sex in their lives. It dispels myths related
to sex and broadens their horizon.
• It can also answer all the questions that they have regarding their changing body and hormonal surges.
• Children are often inquisitive about the other gender. Sex education in school can help them understand the
differences and keep the desire to explore things for themselves in check.
• Child sexual abuse is a social malice that is afflicting thousands worldwide. Sex education in schools can play
an active role in curbing the incidence of abuse as through this medium children can be made aware of the
difference between good and bad touch.
• It is much better to teach children about sexual health in school rather letting them use other resources, such
as pornographic material and the internet. This is important because avenues, such as the internet have a
huge store of information that might be misleading.
• With problems, such as teenage pregnancies and transmission of STDs on the rise, it is only appropriate that
sex education is made accessible in school so that the most number of children can be made aware.
• It transforms children into responsible adults. It is a known fact that teenagers today turn sexually active,
therefore, sex education can help them understand the benefit of abstinence in the early years or it can at
least teach them how to be responsible sexually active people.

16. • Cons of Sex Education in Schools
• Mostly teachers who are given the task of teaching sex education to students are not
experts and have vague ideas about sexual health themselves. This is even more
harmful as incorrect information is extremely lethal as it can actually leave a wrong
impression on the students. Children have an impressionable mind and incorrect
information imparted at an early age can actually transform them into ignorant
adults.
• Students may still be subject to embarrassment or excitable by subject matter. If not
taught properly, sex education in school can become a matter of ridicule and
students may not take any interest in it.
• The fact that in most schools sex education is treated like an extracurricular course
and not a primary one. If the authorising body is not serious about it then they
cannot expect that students and teachers will be interested in it.
• Sex education at school may be at odds with the religious ideologies. Unless these
disparities are sorted out by someone, who is aware of the two ideologies, sex
education at school can actually confuse the students more.

17. • Why sex education is important?
• It's been proven time and time again. We know students who receive formal
sex education in schools are shown to first have sexual intercourse later than
students who have not had sex education. Sex education does not encourage
teenagers to have sex, it does quite the opposite.
• Every teenager should have sex education incorporated into their schooling. It
shouldn’t be opt-in or opt-out but mandatory. Why should parents be able to
opt their children in or out of a subject that they'll need later in life, one way
or another? Sex education should be mandatory, comprehensive, medically
accurate, and taught throughout student's school years, just like math. It's
been shown to help students, not hurt. Not only is having access to sex
education that is not only comprehensive but medically accurate a human
right; it's our fundamental duty as a society to educate the next generation.

18. • Kirby D et al. Impact of Sex and HIV Education Programs on Sexual
Behaviors of Youth in Developing and Developed Countries. [Youth Research
Working Paper, No. 2] Research Triangle Park, NC: Family Health
International, 2005.
• Alford S. Science and Success: Sex Education and Other Programs that
Work to Prevent Teen Pregnancy, HIV & Sexually Transmitted Infections.
Washington, DC: Advocates for Youth, 2003.
• Alford S. Science and Success, Second Edition: Programs that Work to
Prevent Teen Pregnancy, HIV & Sexually Transmitted
Infections. Washington, DC: Advocates for Youth, 2008.
• Santelli J et al. Abstinence and abstinence-only education: a review of U.S.
policies and programs. Journal of Adolescent Health 2006; 38(1):72-81.