By Gabriella Ciuffetelli
Editorials Editor
With a lecture series for National Public Health Week coming up on campus April 17, I couldn’t help but notice one distinctive type of health education left off of the list: sexual education.
Of course, that is not to say that Hofstra doesn’t have a robust sexual education program. In fact, as a student, I am proud of how many organizations and events dedicated to sexual education Hofstra makes accessible to students.
I genuinely believe that Hofstra has succeeded at creating a safe space in which students can talk about sex, their sexualities and any accompanying issue or question that goes along with either. However, I wish the same could be said about public schools.
To me, refusing to put sexual education in a high school curriculum is equal parts naïve and dangerous.
I understand that everyone has different beliefs and that some people can say with full confidence that they have no intention of engaging in sexual behavior until their adult lives. However, we have a responsibility to give students the tools to make educated choices and whether or not they choose to use them is their own prerogative.
For students who don’t have an open dialogue with their parents about sexual education, school may very well be the only reliable source of information they can find regarding the subject. This is especially true in the cases where students and their parents hold different opinions regarding abstinence.
And if kids can’t turn to their parents or to their school, then where can they turn? Their friends? The Internet?
While kids are more than comfortable turning to the Internet, we must remember that not everything there is true, and that not every answer can be found and answered by Google.
Furthermore, having kids depend on their peers for advice is an even worse idea. You’d be hard pressed to find anyone who thinks that one 15-year-old turning to another 15-year-old for sex-ed is anything less than a terrible idea.
Of course, there are also people who disagree with the idea simply because they think it is “too awkward” to learn about sexual education in school. Frankly, I find this argument to be absolutely void of substance.
The point of learning, especially in high school and in college, is to be exposed to things you don’t think about every day. More often than not, subjects will make students feel uncomfortable in some way or form, and considering you learn about half of these body parts and their functions in biology, sexual education really shouldn’t be that far of a stretch for your mind.
Of course, this is all compounded with the fact that sexual education is about so much more than how to put on a condom. Sexual education should be used to provide students with information regarding all aspects of sexual health and well-being, whether they are physical, mental or emotional.
Aside from the physical aspect, sexual education can, and in many other countries does, cover other things. Important topics like sexuality, societal and emotional aspects of sex, the proper usage of birth control (for males and females), sexual assault and consent – and that’s just the beginning of the list.
These topics have extraordinary impacts on students’ lives, and to boil sexual education down to nothing more than a list of STDs and a few diagrams of the reproductive organs is shameful.
These classes don’t even have to be compulsory. In fact, a feasible middle ground could be for schools to allow students to opt in or out of these classes. But I believe they must, at the very least, be made available and easily accessible for students who want and/or need it.
We need to stop portraying sex-ed as crass and inappropriate and see it for what it really is: an opportunity to inform and encourage young people to make educated decisions.
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