Below is an excerpt from Susan N. Wilson's Raising the voices of teens to change sexuality education; in it, she argues that teens should be informed more through education systems. As such, teens would be allowed to have more information about the choices they make, thus making them and their actions safer, from her point of view. The full article can be found at: http://proquest.umi.com/pqdlink?Ver=1&Exp=04-01-2016&FMT=7&DID=75203004&RQT=309
Raising the voices of teens to change sexuality education
Our society agonizes over providing sexuality education and information to teens. In the process, an extensive web of adults is involved in shaping the content of local and state curricula: school board members, superintendents, principals, teachers and consultants, textbook authors, curriculum developers, medical professionals, government bureaucrats, leaders of faith-based organizations, advocacy groups, parent advisory boards, social service providers, and, increasingly over the last years, politicians and the varied interest groups to whom they respond. In the battles that often ensue, the voices of one group often go unheard-the voices of young people whose personal sexual development, sexual health, and sexual decisions hang in the balance and become lost in adults' struggles for control.
If adolescents were accorded a larger role in sexuality education, if their views were solicited, if adults listened to their ideas, if their suggestions were adopted, if adults trusted them with information, what might the results be? Young people might learn more; their attitudes about their own and others' sexuality might become more respectful; their behaviors might become more responsible; and they might make better choices.
Unfortunately, few adults ever involve teens in the process of developing sexuality education, apart from asking them to absorb-and occasionally deliver-information developed by adults. Rarely are teens asked the vital questions they have the ability to answer: What do teens need from their parents and other adults? What do they need from schools? How can sexuality education classes be structured to have maximum impact on students? What can teachers do to communicate more effectively with teens? In what grade should sexuality education topics be introduced? What sorts of classroom materials would be most useful to teens? How can teens help to inform each other? In what risky behaviors are teens engaging? Why? What would persuade them to change their behaviors?
STATUS OF SEXUALITY EDUCATION
It is not as if adults have the task so well in hand that they do not need help. It is true that birth, pregnancy, and abortion rates among teens in the United States are on the decline. But these rates are still unacceptably high, much higher, for example, than those of the European countries most like ours. The vast majority of teens (65 percent) engage in sexual intercourse before they graduate from high school, according to the latest figures from the US. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention(CDC). Eighteen percent of ninth-grade students initiate intercourse before age 13. Approximately four million teens in the United States get an STD every year.'
Our country's response to these dismal statistics is worse than unsuccessful; it defies logic. Presently, the favorite strategy of politicians is to pour money into untested abstinence-only-until-marriage programs that are forbidden to discuss contraception and disease-prevention strategies. About one third of US. school districts offer only abstinence education. In the other two thirds, sexuality education is often circumscribed, medically inaccurate, overly cautious, and, as young people constantly complain, "too little, too late."2 Clearly, the adults who control this system could use some help from the teens they are trying to impact.
TURNING TO TEENS
For its first 12 years, the Network for Family Life Education worked to promote comprehensive sexuality education in New Jersey schools through the usual pathways: policy development, advocacy, and teacher training. Over the years, despite our victories-New Jersey is a state with a requirement for comprehensive sexuality education-we admitted to making slow progress. We had to fight off efforts by political and religious groups to impose an abstinence-only edict on all 600 school districts, and our state government failed to deliver on promised funds for much-needed teacher training.
During a presentation to a group of students at a leadership institute, we mentioned that we were considering developing and publishing a newsletter about sexuality and health issues written by teens, for teens. The reaction was electrifying. Members of the audience said that teens would read such a publication; they spoke of the weaknesses of their programs and how they came too late in their lives to help them make decisions; they described their teachers' discomfort when talking about sexual issues; and they complained that many teachers withheld information from them because of parental or administrative pressures. Most importantly, they told us that they trusted teens to inform them about this difficult subject. On the strength of these reactions, we sought funds to test a teen-to-teen newsletter.
After we recruited an editorial board representing a diverse group of New Jersey high schools, we brought them together for an initial meeting. "What should we call the newsletter?" we asked. In the subsequent brainstorming session, one student suggested SEX, ETC. After a moment of silence, everybody agreed that this was a frank, attention getting name that would attract teen readers. We were right!
