I’m sure everyone has at least has had one class of sex education in their lives before. It could be in a health class or in a lecture from the teacher because someone got pregnant. But have you ever realized that those classes were never detailed enough? At least here in Taiwan, where I learn, sex ed was never enough. In seventh grade, I only learned about the female and male genitals. That’s it.

Schools need to teach more about sex ed. Learning about sex ed is extremely important, and schools aren’t teaching enough. I don’t need a thorough, long lecture about every detail of sex, because that’d be weird. But I at least have to know how my body and how sex works. The current school system does not address sex ed enough, and it’s painful to see the people around you not even knowing the basics.

School is the best source of information for teens

There are a lot of examples to back up my point. First, school is the most reliable place for a teenager to gain their information. Sure, there is information online, but let’s be honest: if any teenager is looking for information about sex, I’m pretty sure no one looks on reputable websites.

By teaching sex ed in schools, students have a better source of information other than just videos on the internet or friends who think they know a lot about sex. There is a lot of misleading information you can find online, and it’s sometimes very hard to differentiate between reliable and false information.

A very good example is pornographic videos. We all know that you are supposed to be 18 to watch them, but most of my friends have or still watch porn. Sure, it may be exciting to watch, but there is a lot of inaccurate information in porn. Considering the number of my classmates that watch porn right now, they aren’t getting information from good sources.

Teens will be safer about sex in the future

Another reason why teaching more sex ed in school is a good idea is that it makes students safer in the future when they have sex. This ties in with the last argument because if the only place students learn about sex is online from misleading videos, then their information is going or be wrong or even unsafe.

On the social media app TikTok, there was a video trending a while ago. In the video, the girl shares her first-time experience of sex. The boy could not figure out where to put his penis, and he ended up sticking it in the wrong place, hurting the girl. This could easily be prevented if schools just taught us better sex ed.

Another example is a question that was trending a few months ago. The question was, did you know that girls had three separate orifices, all with different purposes, in their pubic area? Sadly, I did not know this about my own anatomy. Our school never taught us that, or they did very briefly, but I didn’t even know about my own body.

Sex should not be a taboo

Here is another reason why sex ed should be taught more in school: a lot of Taiwanese students feel like sex is a taboo topic when it shouldn’t be. Sex makes a lot of Taiwanese students uncomfortable because they feel like it is somewhat “dirty”, but it isn’t – or at least it shouldn’t be seen that way

Sex is a part of life. You literally need it to create life. It shouldn’t be a taboo subject at all. A lot of parents get angry when their children ask them about sex, but they shouldn’t be. By not teaching sex ed enough, schools are implying that sex is either a taboo subject or it’s not important, and both of the statements are wrong.

It’s important to normalize talking about sex-related topics because if students feel like it’s an awkward or embarrassing thing to talk about when they have any questions or problems, they won’t consult a parent or an adult. They may be facing serious difficulties, but choose to hide it and act like nothing is wrong so they wouldn’t feel embarrassed.

Also, there are dangers to making sex taboo. First of all, without professional advice or education, teenagers may get hurt while having sex. It’s not just that they might feel embarrassed, but actual accidents may occur.

For example, in 2016, there was a HIV outbreak in Taiwan. The reason why is because people where ashamed of having HIV, so they were scared to go get checked at the doctors. People weren’t getting checked, and they just continued to spread it to more and more people. This could have been easily avoided if people felt comfortable going to hospitals to check for HIV. But they thought this was a dirty and disgusting thing, so it’s better if they pretended that they don’t have it.

Also, when schools teach low-quality sex ed, that leaves a lot of space in people’s minds for stereotypes and poor information to take root.

For example, a lot of boys know nothing about girl’s periods. They still think we can hold it in or control the flow. It’s stereotypes like this that’ll harm girls because some men say that we’re just faking pain to get out of things.

Counterpoint and why it’s wrong

A lot of people argue that by teaching more sex ed in school, students will feel like having sex at a young age is acceptable. But let’s be honest: people are going to have sex whether you teach about it or not. So why not give them the information they need to have sex safely?

I have friends who are having sex right now at the age of 14, so if not teaching sex ed is the policy to prevent kids from having sex at all, it’s not working. Of course, schools shouldn’t promote sex, but that doesn’t mean that schools shouldn’t teach about it at all. Having the basic information keeps them safer when they decide to do it.

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In conclusion, schools should teach more about sex ed. Taiwanese students are so afraid of talking about sex, in part because schools never teach about it. Policymakers and administrators think this is a good way to prevent students from having sex, because if you don’t know anything about something, you wouldn’t do it, right? Wrong. We can easily look up stuff on the internet and act like we know everything about it. So why not teach us about it, so we don’t wind up believing everything the internet says and accidentally hurt ourselves?