Oregon is undergoing a change in its sexual education, according to “Southern Oregon’s News Source,” the Mail Tribune. Instead of focusing on the basics of how not to get pregnant, e.g., abstinence and contraception, the program might actually start teaching the basics of good communication. Good communication! How novel an idea is that?

While I can’t comment much about the Oregon sexual ed program because, obviously, I had my own schooling in the isolation of the middle of the Pacific Ocean, I can say that teachers did think we all wanted to jump into the pants of the person sitting next to us. So they figured they’d show us condoms and how to wrap them around a fake penis, so, perhaps, one day, when we are greeted with the opportunity to share ourselves with another person, we can apply a condom the correct way (unless, of course, our carnal desires take over and we forget the condom altogether).

The idea for this ground-breaking concept came from students themselves. There was a panel of 70 students and parents in a county in Oregon, and their requests mirrored the findings of a study done on 2,000 students in other counties. What astounded me most about this article was this quote from Stacy Peterson, a teacher at an Oregon school:

The main thing that surprised me the most is they want to hear more about the communication.

Really? Students actually care about keeping their relationships intact more than concealing from their mothers the fact that they have sex with their significant others on the weekends? What a surprise. And I thought my boyfriend and I was the only couple in the world that cared less about sex and more about connection, even though we’ve been “going out” for four years.

Then again, where should the blame for that misconception be aimed? When did teenagers suddenly become solely sexual creatures, so much so that a teacher would wonder at the fact that they want to learn how to communicate better? Yes, of course we could blame the media. High school students have rather exciting sex lives in movies, like American Pie, for example. But American Pie wasn’t to be taken seriously by anyone. Okay, so other movies and TV series show high school students in compromising positions. Sex is made to be mundane. And everyone does the mundane. Therefore, everyone must be having sex.

There’s also the fact that high school students do, indeed, have sex. Not everyone, but a significant enough portion to warrant the need to teach contraception in high school. That’s just a fact. Of course, since we aren’t going up to everyone and asking, “Did you screw your boyfriend today?” we don’t really know. And how many students are actually honest with those surveys they pass out to high schoolers every now and then to snoop into their sex lives? I know some people who had sex. A couple of girls in our class had babies. Does that make sex a prevalent activity in the high school world? Probably not.

But whatever it is that makes us think teenagers are having sex the way rabbits have sex, at least some states are addressing another aspect of relationships: communication. I mean, if a girl can’t tell her boyfriend she doesn’t want to have sex, then we’ve already failed, haven’t we?

Posted on November 3rd, 2006 by Joy
Filed under: High School, Sex