The Case for No Sexual Education in Schools - By the Numbers

It’s spring, and across the country, many communities are concluding elections for their school boards. Soon, new members will be seated and begin reviewing and renewing policies and practices for the coming school year.

In recent years, videos of furious parents confronting school boards over explicit, sexual material in schools made the rounds on social media. Parents in those videos were often objecting to “educational material” that was so sexually graphic that school board members refused to look at it or hear it read aloud.

Parents should be concerned about any material pushed under the noses of their children, and a significant body of data indicates that any sexual or sexualizing education or material in our schools does significantly more harm than good to our children.

Before I explain why this is so, let me tell you that I have been a teacher and a researcher for more than 35 years, studying the educational process (pedagogy) my entire professional life.

To understand why sex education is not good for our children, we need only look at how the educational process works. From the earliest age, teachers give our children bits of information and encourage them to experiment with that information, combining it to produce what is, for the student, new and exciting innovations.

Enter sex education. Note that we are not talking about instructions concerning the physiological processes of the body, such as menstruation, pregnancy, or even erections. Information about how our bodies work is essential but should only be delivered in a sex-segregated setting (girls only and boys only) and with written parental permission.

Rather, any instructions concerning the mechanics of the sexual act should be excluded from schools. Why? Because students will treat such information in the same way that they have been conditioned to treat other bits of information and instruction: absorb it, implement it, and experiment with it.

Proponents of sexual education aren’t bothered by this fact but instead often point to the decline in teen pregnancies as evidence of the success of sexual education. True, thanks to the aggressive dosing of our young girls with artificial, hormonal contraceptives such as the pill, intrauterine devices, and subdermal contraceptive implants, pregnancies are down.

But what these proponents don’t mention is that, contrary to assumptions of our hyper-sexualized culture, sexual activity, contraceptives, and adolescents do not go well together.

Data show clearly that as sex education has gone up in U.S. schools, so too has the severity and frequency of sexually transmitted infections (STIs). Some of these diseases, such as human papillomavirus (HPV), can have lifelong or life-threatening consequences.

For example, recurrent exposure to HPV is responsible for nearly all cases (according to one study, 99.7 percent) of cervical cancer. In most instances, the body can defend itself against HPV, unless there is repeated exposure to the virus and its many variants through sexual encounters with multiple partners. As the number of sexual encounters with different sexual partners goes up, so too does the risk of cervical cancer.

The facts concerning HPV and cervical cancer are well-established, but, unfortunately, most young girls are never told, either in school or the doctor’s office, that their best defense against this “silent killer,” as some call it, is abstinence. Instead, sex educators assume that girls will simply become sexually promiscuous and therefore encourage them (through sex education) to take hormonal birth control to avoid pregnancy. However, it is also well-known that girls who are given hormonal birth control engage in substantially higher rates of sexual activity, which, in turn, increases their exposure to HPV, as well as other STIs such as the nontreatable Herpes simplex virus type 2.

Despite the dangers of STIs, as well as data that indicate higher rates of depression and suicidal tendencies among adolescents who engage in sexual activity, year after year, we are told that we need more sex education for our children.

Again, why? Does sexual education, especially with explicit sexual images, lead to happier and more stable relationships? The data indicate that it does not. Couples who are in relationships in which one or both partners are not habituated to sexually explicit images (they do not view pornographic material) report satisfaction with their relationships that is 90 percent higher than those who do view sexually explicit material.

In other words, habituation to sexually graphic material decreases relationship satisfaction and stability.

But what about the argument that sexual knowledge and sexual compatibility are important prerequisites for relationship stability? The data indicate that this is also not true. Couples who had no sexual partners before marriage report a 45 percent higher rate of relationship stability than those who had any sexual partners before marriage. And as to the old saw that where sex is concerned, variety is the spice of life, the data suggest otherwise: Those in healthy marriages report a higher level of satisfaction concerning their sex life than those who are single.

Perhaps most interesting is the data that indicate a roughly 4 to 6 percent decrease in marital satisfaction and marital stability for every sexual partner someone has had before marriage. That is, the greater the number of sexual partners before marriage, the greater the chance of never getting married or divorcing after marriage. The less sexual activity before marriage, the higher the level of sexual satisfaction within marriage.

I am fully aware that for advocates of sexual education and increased sexual activity (for all ages), “marriage” is perhaps the only dirty word. But as parents concerned for our children’s well-being, we should care about marriage and marriage stability. Having a child out of wedlock is the greatest risk factor for poverty for both mother and child, and the benefits of marriage for men, women, and society are well-studied and firmly established.

What are the benefits of more (and more explicit) sex education that the experts tout? A quick glance at how sex education experts define “benefits” is telling. Sexual education, beginning in kindergarten, say the “experts,” is positively correlated with an “[increased] appreciation for sexual diversity and [improved] environments for LGBTQ students.”

Ah, yes, of course. More sexual education leads to more sexual behavior, the benefits of which are ... more sexual behavior. Get the picture?

The numbers are in, and they are clear: Fifty years of aggressive sex education is doing much, much more harm than good for our children. As radical as it might sound, we must listen to the numbers and stop sexual education in our schools. Why? Because, like a snake swallowing its tail, the promotion and practice of “more sex education is good sex education” is unnatural to our children’s current needs and harmful for their future selves.

Views expressed in this article are opinions of the author and do not necessarily reflect the views of The Epoch Times.