This essay focuses on sexuality education. Also known as sex education, or sex and relationship education, sexuality education refers to the process of acquiring information and forming attitudes and beliefs about sex, sexual identity, relationships and intimacy (Bruess and Schroeder, 2014). Sexuality education is also about helping people develop skills which enable them to make informed choices concerning their behaviour and feel confident and competent about acting on those choices (Magoon, 2010). Before looking at the literature on sexuality education, the essay discusses a personal account of sexuality education by a neuroscientist, Carl Hart.
In his book entitled ‘High Price – Drugs, Neuroscience and Discovering Myself’, the writer
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One can agree with Carl Hart that without an adult to guide a chid about sex and relationships, the child can hardly know much about sex and relationships before his/her fist experience. The child may also not know much about the consequences of sexual activities or what constitutes good sexual behaviour. Research reveals that the reason why sexuality education should not be ignored is because many children who do not receive sexuality education grow up being confused about sex and relationships (Renold, …show more content…
Many sexuality education school programmes focuses on prevention of teenage pregnancy, birth control, information about condoms and other contraceptives (Michie et al., 2005). Whereas some parents want abstinence to be the primary goal in sexuality education, others want children to be taught to make responsible decisions regarding sex (Michie et al., 2005). The fact is that abstinence is not always observed, and this explains why schools must have a more comprehensive approach in which they teach abstinence as the best option and provide information about contraception. It has been asserted that any sexuality education programme that supports abstinence until marriage is founded upon religious beliefs that it is not acceptable to engage in sexual intercourse outside of marriage (Tucker et al., 2006). Normally, the tenets of this approach to sexuality education are defined in a way that makes pre-marital sex