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Sex Education In Public Schools: Article Analysis

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The concept of sex education in American public schools has been an ongoing controversy for quite some time now. In an article from the New York Daily News, author and NYU professor Jonathan Zimmerman provides the argument that sex education will not work for American youth regardless of method. Zimmerman elaborates in his article the inefficiency of teaching sex education in a universal manner as well as the ideal that Americans need to “show much more solicitude” to the parents who oppose sex education in public schools in the United States. Zimmerman begins his article by analogizing the teaching of sex ed in schools to teaching religion publicly; he poses a hypothetical situation in which a person says that children aren’t learning religion …show more content…

For instance, Zimmerman cites dated statistics (the 2004 Zogby poll) in order to backup some of his claims; the problem with that is that the social standards of the United States are constantly changing, and the opinions of parents may be different now than it was a few years back. Another issue with the article is how specific it is to one instance which is sex ed in only New York. Despite the article being from a New York publisher, in order to establish a significantly stronger argument on why sex ed will not work for everyone, it would’ve benefited Zimmerman greatly if he did research on and spoke about the United States as a whole in order to convey the importance of the issues of American sex ed. The article has plenty of potential to reach much wider audiences if published by other means, and with some editing and new research, Zimmerman would have a solid, universal. Zimmerman’s stance on the issue at hand is unclear at certain points in the article, such as when he states his agreement with the way teaching of sex ed that has been implemented despite being an article focusing on “why sex ed won’t work for all.” One place where the article really shines is the usage of analogy. Zimmerman’s tie between teaching sex ed in schools and mandating prayer and religion in schools provides an very clever way of getting the reader to think about his or her own stances and morals, as well as make comparisons between the two instances to determine whether or not the sex ed in New York is

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