Importance of Sex Education in Schools

For the healthy growth and development of a teenager, it is important that his/her curiosity on sex and other related concepts is addressed by a parent or a teacher. This, however, doesn’t happen in most cases because of the fact that teenagers feel ashamed to request their parents for information on such sensitive issues and end up looking for answers in magazines, books, pornographic websites and other sources. Such sources of information on sex lead the teenagers to misunderstand most of what it means. It is, therefore, important for schools to accommodate sex education for students to help them know exactly what sex is about.Typically, sex education teaches students about:-

• Human anatomy
• Human reproduction via sexual intercourse
• Pregnancy
• Sexual orientation
• Tips to practice safe sex
• Sexually transmitted disease such as HIV/AIDS, Gonorrhoea.

Why is sex education important in schools?With an increase in the number of teenage pregnancies and birth of preterm babies, it has become of utmost importance to impart knowledge on sex in an academic environment where teenagers are away from social and religious bias. Besides, teenage is a time when an individual’s body goes through physical changes particularly in terms of the development of sex organs and hormonal changes that take place in the body and make them curious. The need to explore what sex really is among the top things that adolescents indulge in even when they might say that they are not interested.Sex education in schools is important because it can help:* to avoid and decrease the incidence of teenage pregnancy as it will make the teenagers aware of the repercussions of indulging in sex without contraception on health, future and education,* to stress on the importance of self-reliance,* to learn and understand the importance of using contraceptive methods such as condoms to decrease the incidence of sexually transmitted disease or teenage pregnancies,* to prevent or decrease the rate of sexually transmitted diseases such as non-Gonoccocal Urethritis, gonorrhoea , syphilis and pelvic inflammatory disease and* To prevent, control and decrease the incidence of HIV/AIDS.Sex education must be considered an important part of a teenager’s life and be taken as part of a parent or teacher’s responsibility. Several studies have shown that an effective sex education to adolescents in school can help in increasing the age at which they have sex, thereby reducing the incidences of teenage pregnancy, HIV/AIDS and STDs.