Dive Brief:
- Time magazine looks back on the changing demands of sex education, mapping the shift from biological lectures to conversations dealing with topics such as homosexuality and birth control.
- A big reason for this shift was the AIDS epidemic of the 1980s. In an attempt to curb the transmission of this new disease, Surgeon General C. Everett Koop in 1986 made the recommendation that schools begin talking about sex ed in more graphic terms and at much younger ages.
- Despite this push, it would appear the nation is reverting back to old ways. In 2014 there are 50% fewer states requiring sex education in all public school classrooms than in 1994.
Dive Insight:
Time argues that the reason for this reversal is that there are now effective HIV treatments. "Instead of sex ed ending HIV infection among teenagers, treatment for AIDS became a reality and the syndrome stopped being the conversation-ender it once was, freeing parents and educators to go back to war over what should be taught when," says Time writer Lily Rothman.
She is right when she mentions the current tensions over sex education. For example, the University of Hawaii Center on Disability Studies developed a controversial sex education curriculum, Pono Choices, that drew fire last year as some parents and legislators felt it was "inaccurate and inappropriate," teaching mature sexual topics to students as young as 11. Las Vegas has also dealt with these tensions. In September parents fought a proposal for Clark County School District to use material that would teach students as young as kindergarten about masturbation and sexuality.