Ashley Adams remembers sitting on the couch with her grandmother watching “Starstruck” on The Disney Channel.
Sterling Knight, Adams’ childhood crush, appeared on the screen.
“I brought up the word ‘sex,'” said Adams, now 17. “That turned…woah.”
Adams remembers her grandmother having “the sex talk” with her that night, but for many young adults, media–especially the Internet–acts as the first engagement with the topic, especially when many schools fail to teach comprehensive sexual education.
Michelle Baffour, 17, says the internet is a “dangerous place to learn about sex” and that “children should learn about sex from a reliable source.”
Many district area residents this week offered split opinions on whether public school, funded by the government, should be that “reliable source” that teaches young people about sexual education and health.
Andrew Melmed, 30, says children should learn about sex on their own or “through church” but emphasized that it is not the government’s role to dictate sex education.
Virginia Suardi, 22, disagrees.
Suardi thinks the government should facilitate comprehensive sex education and that federally funded abstinence-only programs are negative because “it’s obvious teenagers are not going to stop having sex.”
Abstinence-only sex education emphasizes that sex outside of marriage has damaging psychological and physical effects. It does not focus on contraceptive health and does not stress the importance of protection from sexually transmitted diseases. Abstinence-only education has the primary goal of preventing all sexual endeavors before they start.
However, research published in September 2017 in the Journal of Adolescent Health shows that children enrolled in abstinence-only programs are just as likely to have sex in high school and may have higher pregnancy and sexually transmitted infection rates.
According to the 2019 Fiscal Year Budget, abstinence-only sexual education is reaching more American teenagers today in public schools with a $75 million push from the Trump administration.
That is troubling for many parents in the Washington, D.C. metropolitan area like Sarah Juram, 55, who says abstinence-only education is “ridiculous.”
“Students aren’t going to practice abstinence, and pretending like they are is damaging,” Juram said.
Maya Carlsen, 17, feels there are taboos surrounding sex in American culture. And she believes sex education policies in schools, even when offered, are sexist.
Young women are taught to “close their legs,” said Adams, but young boys are not taught the same.
Sex education classes in school are modeled after what she says is America’s detrimental sex culture.
“A dad will tell their son to go do it,” Adams said. “But a girl will be called a slut. And schools don’t stray far from that idea.”