Sex-Ed: Can we teach more than consequences?

In my past job at Planned Parenthood, we often had groups of high school students come to the clinic to take a tour and speak with the staff about sexual health and the services we provided. I was often the point person for these groups, perhaps because I was the youngest employee at the clinic and perhaps because of my enthusiasm and desire to show adolescents who we were and what we did. Through my experience, I was often struck by the complexity of their questions. They wanted to know how to talk about sex in relationships, how to keep their partners happy, why people engaged in certain behaviors over others, and so forth. This nuanced way of integrating feelings, behaviors, and emotions into the way they thought about sex encompassed more than just body parts, pregnancy, and infections. 

Unfortunately, much of the education that teenagers receive about sex is provided in disjointed discussions about physiology and dangerous consequences, leaving out the parts about life. While I have fantasized about alternate ways of teaching sexuality education, I had not imagined a method so refreshing as Al Vernacchio’s way of teaching his Sexuality and Society course at Friends’ Central (a private K-12) in Philadelphia.  In Laurie Abraham’s article Teaching Good Sex, she describes her experience as a reporter sitting in on this class for two weeks, observing and interviewing both teacher and students about their experience. It was overwhelmingly positive for everyone involved, and provides hope that the sexuality education of the future can be much more useful to young people as they enter adulthood.

In reading this article, my thoughts are mostly infused with pride, appreciation, and awe at the courage and innovation it takes to teach like this in our current world. But despite this, I have a hard time picturing how this type of curriculum could be implemented in the real world of public schools and conservative communities, especially those that believe teenagers should not be having sex, and any education that teaches about pleasure is enabling illicit behavior. There is plenty of evidence that fact-based information about sex that acknowledges the good parts merely makes sex safer and does not promote it, but for most people, evidence does not trump ideology.

If we could get Mr. Vernacchio’s style of sexual health education to be implemented in private and alternative schools that have the political environment to tolerate such a way of teaching, the lives of those students would be greatly enhanced. But this will create a widening knowledge gap that may be correlated with class, location, and race. Those who are not privileged enough to be able to attend private school will miss out. Those who live in rural or more conservative areas will miss out. I find this problematic, but am not yet able to come to a conclusion for how to fix it. I know it is merely the job of the reporter to report and the teacher to teach, but I wish that both Ms. Abraham and Mr. Vernacchio were more in-tune with the social justice aspects of this issue. If I believe anything, I believe that knowledge is power. When the political climate prevents the spread of knowledge, this represents the most fundamental kind of problem.

I will continue to wrestle with this issue in my career. And, certain words uttered by Mr. Vernacchio in a recent Skype session with my Safer Sex in the City class give me hope: When asked about political climates, he stated that while things do change slowly, change can be great. If students at Friends’ Central grow up to be influential, and likely they will, they won’t think twice about supporting the kind of sexuality education they received as adolescents. It may take a while, but this could be all that is needed to create a receptive political environment and ensure accurate and life-based sexuality education for all.

Read Laurie Abraham's article here.