I should preface this by saying that I consider my high school’s sex ed program pretty good, as far as high school sex ed programs go. We learned all about condoms and birth control and diseases and whatnot, and did so in a fairly open minded setting (in a private school in the suburbs of a pretty liberal city). That said, there were some pretty crucial elements missing.

1. Consent.

In light of Steubenville, it seems like a lot of people really don’t understand what consent is about. Consent is not not-saying-no-because-you’re-happy-or-unconscious-or-mute. Consent is enthusiastically saying yes to sexual activity. Consent is saying, “Yes, I absolutely would love to take off our clothes and touch each other. That is one of the best ideas we’ve ever had. As long as you want to, I definitely think it would be a good thing to do.” (That Girl Magazine suggests that you memorize this and recite it every time you want to consent to something. It’s a real turn on, I hear.)

Part of the problem, I think, is that high schools are caught up in telling kids not to have sex, so teaching kids how to say YES to is a low priority. Sex is something you’re not supposed to want to do, so why schools teach you to express that it is something you want to do? Isn’t that a contradictory message?

Maybe it is. Here’s the thing though: there are plenty of reasons to have sex, and there are plenty of reasons not to have sex, and I’ll get to that in a minute. But high school students have a right to know that their consent is something they have the power to give, freely and actively, and in the end that decision is theirs alone. 

2. Decision making.

As mentioned above, there are reasons not to have sex with someone. If you don’t want to, that’s a good reason not to right there. Other factors like STIs and pregnancy were covered pretty thoroughly when I was in high school, but sex is a personal decision, and not always a logical one.

There are also reasons to have sex with someone. Those are worth talking about too! There are bad reasons and good reasons to have sex with someone, and most high school kids go into these decisions blind. If we want people to make good decisions, we should talk to them about how to make good decisions. Not the decision that we think is right for them, but good decisions of their own.

3. Identity.

My high school sex ed teacher had spent some time working in a trans* resources center, so we actually talked about gender identity a lot in that context, which was awesome (although there were enough other things I would have loved to talk about that sometimes I wonder whether it was the best allocation of our like, two weeks of sex ed).

That said, all high school curricula should have something to say about trans* rights. And all high school curricula should really make a point to discuss sexual identity and orientation in an open and honest way. They need to frame the conversation that, right now, is mostly about procreative sex.

4. Pleasure.

What is good sex? What is bad sex? We might find out eventually, but it might be useful to have some discussion of this in our high school classrooms. I think my high school’s sex ed program mentioned the clitoris once, and all the pervs who read literature porn online (e.g. me) blushed and giggled and averted our eyes.

We should also be telling kids about emotions. Everyone processes sex and emotions differently, and that’s great, but most people do intertwine the two things somewhat, and that’s worth talking about. For example:

Bad: Girls, when you have sex, you’re going to get so emotional. You’ll probably want to get married to the guy, because you are a lady. And then when you and this dude break up, you’ll just want to die. If you hadn’t had sex, it would be easier! Don’t have sex, because feelings!

Good: There all kinds of ways that you might feel after having sex with someone. Let’s have a discussion about that. 

5. Sex.

As far as I can remember, most of our discussions had to do with the consequences of sex, but it didn’t have much to do with sex itself. I realized this during a conversation with a friend of mine.

Me: If you could add one thing to you high school’s sex ed program, what would it be?

Erika: Sex.

Me: What did you learn about?

Erika: Something about gonorrhea, and then we moved on.

Sex needs to be a part of our conversations about sex. I mean, right?

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