Plan B Forum

New York City Will Mandate Sex Education

By FERNANDA SANTOS and ANNA M. PHILLIPS
Published: August 9, 2011

For the first time in nearly two decades, students in New York City’s public middle and high schools will be required to take sex-education classes beginning this school year, using a curriculum that includes lessons on how to use a condom and the appropriate age for sexual activity.

We're 30+ years into the HIV epidemic, incidence of HIV infection has been skyrocketing among teens and young adults for over a decade, but finally someone pulled their head out of their ass.

Nationwide, one in four teenagers between 2006 and 2008 learned about abstinence without receiving any instruction in schools about contraceptive methods, according to an analysis by the Guttmacher Institute, which studies reproductive health. As of January, 20 states and the District of Columbia mandated sex and H.I.V. education in schools. An additional 12 states, New York included, required H.I.V. education only, according to a policy paper published by the institute.

Imagine if one in four teens had learned about subtraction but not multiplication, or had learned about verbs but not adjectives, or had learned about latitude but not longitude? Doesn't sound quite so justifiable, does it? (especially if it is claimed, as abstinence only programs often do, that only these would guarantee them the correct answer 100% of the time, whereas their counterparts were useless and often dangerous)

But of course, the kids who need it the most will probably never hear it:

Parents will be able to have their children opt out of the lessons on birth-control methods.

because the parents who will pull their children out of class on those days are the same parents who will never talk to their kids about sex themselves.

Perhaps we should allow parents who don't believe in gravity to get their kids exempted from classes discussing planetary motion, or whenever mention will be made of an object falling towards earth?

Some are already preparing for a backlash.

“We’re going to have to be the bridge between the chancellor’s requirements and the community,” said Casimiro Cibelli, principal of Middle School 142 in the Baychester section of the Bronx, where many of the students come from immigrant, religious families with traditional views on sex. “Hopefully, we’ll allay their concerns because of their trust in us.”

I wonder if these "bridges to the community" were built with the KKK before lessons on the civil rights movement were introduced into the curriculum.