Sex in the News: Comprehensive sex ed coming to NYC schools

By Leah

The battle for comprehensive sexual education in New York City is finally over, as for the first time in over twenty years public middle and high school students will be required to take sex-ed classes. The Bloomberg administration has decided it’s time to implement new initiatives in an attempt to improve the lives of the city’s black and Latino teenagers. City statistics show these groups are more at risk than their white counterparts for unplanned pregnancies and contracting sexually-transmitted diseases.

This is just an another example in the move away from abstinence-only education. Between 2006 and 2008, one in four American students was only taught about abstinence, without receiving education about any other form of contraception. At the start of this year, 20 states and the District of Columbia mandated both H.I.V. and sex education.

Students in New York will now take a semester of health classes in sixth or seventh grade, and then another in either grade nine or 10. The education will include how to use a condom as well as discussion on an appropriate age for sexual activity. Parents who do not want their kids learning about contraception can opt to have their students removed from lessons on birth control.

Though since 1987 New York has had education from kindergarten to grade 12 on H.I.V. awareness, a push for a sex-education curriculum was defeated by religious groups in the 1980s.