Sexual education can prevent sexual abuse?
By: Elsa Valenzuela
Sexual education is important because it can help prevent people from committing sexual abuse. It is important to have awareness in society because even though we are in modern times there is a lot of people that do not know much about the subject. Sexual education should begin in home and it would continue in school starting in the lower grades at the age that kids can already differentiate between good and bad decisions. Which at times comes to a problem because a lot of parents do not like this idea so schools have to wait until later years to teach on this subject.´´School policy has been to teach sexual education later, in the 6th grade´´(GIPHY,2016).
Traditionally, sex education was thought to be exclusively the responsibility of family and religion. In 1920 sex education is introduced in high schools. From 1930s-1940s human sexuality courses appear in colleges, sexual education was not taught in schools until 1978. It was then called ´´Life and Family Studies´´, and its content consisted of issues related to the reproductive system and personal hygiene.
A good idea to support this talk is that schools need to have a class of sexual education. A solution for this is that more people to agree, for example all fo those parents that are not very convinced about talking to their kids about this topic until a certain age. Or people that think that kids are still very small to be knowing about the topic. One misconception is that most of the society, specially old people think that the subject is tough or even uncomfortable. “This is why people need to be educated on — you know, a brush on the shoulder — you know, anything at this point can be considered sexual assault and it’s a good thing to be educated” said Ms Benson. (Cosby,2017). There should be a many more support towards sexual education in order to have a better educated society. Also, a well-educated person can know more about their bodies and how they function. I think that overall education of whatever topic is good and brings a lot of knowledge.
´´Since most sexual abuse begins well before puberty, preventive education, if it is to have any effect at all, should begin early in grade school´´(Herman). Her idea supports and backgrounds what I want to say. Having people educated at an early age can be helpful does not matter if it helps a lot or a little bit, the idea is to know about the topic and understand that some actions against your body or someone else´s body are not correct.
Decisionmakers are the main audience to this topic. I would say that decisions about sexual education have to be taken by people with authority and most important of all by people who are convinced that sexual education is important. That know where can sexual education can take people, that understand that this topic can prevent a lot of things all the way to a sexual abuse. For example, there is a chance that a child who may be destined to be a rapist can be educated and education just stopped someone from damaging another person. In this cases a lot of the victims are females, so it is important to let know to males and everyone how important it is to respect eachother. ´´I have spent the past three years in college locker rooms having conversations with young men about the importance of respecting women´´(Jones,2017).
Finally, education in school and in house has a lot of impact towards children. It is a subject that through time will exist and even evolve. Being educated is important and can help society grow and care for their own and others. Unfortunately Kristin Jones had to go through a sexual abuse to know that she was able to say no. If she would have been better educated and her parents would demonstrate more confidence with the topic, maybe she could prevent what happened or she would have talk sooner. Without having to live with it inside her for the long time she had to keep it.
