School's supposed to prepare you for the real world, but for many students in America, sex ed class may be doing just the opposite. Now, in Las Vegas, Nevada, high schoolers are speaking out against the vague, conservative sex ed curriculum that they say is failing students, as reported by Channel 8 KLAS-TV.
This past Wednesday, students brought their posters and their concerns to a Clark County board meeting. They held signs that read “Knowledge Is Power,” "Our Health Matters,” and “Students for Sex Education.”
One student, who is a survivor of sexual assault, told KLAS-TV that her sex ed class failed to teach her about sexual assault: “I didn’t have words to name what had happened to me in the past and the experiences I had with sexual assault … I wasn’t provided with that terminology in my sexual health education classes here in Nevada. It took me years before I could access that information and could name what happened to me.”
She added that the abstinence-based curriculum only added to her shame about being a survivor, saying, "I was confronted by the immediate message ‘Don’t have sex until you get married’ and ‘If you have sex before you get married, you’re not pure anymore.' I felt ostracized and alienated and impure."
Controversy over Clark County's sex ed curriculum has been heating up over the past few weeks, when parents learned about the county's plans to expand sex ed to included science-based anatomy lessons. After some parents expressed outrage, the school district quickly backtracked.
Now, the school district is holding a number of public forums to hear opinions from the community, and many are speaking out for students' right to a more comprehensive curriculum. The Nevada Teen Health And Safety Coalition has collected a number of testimonials from teens, parents and health professionals sharing why they think Clark County needs better sex ed. The site also is asking supporters to sign their petition.
[h/t Think Progress]
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