EDITORIALPublished: August 10, 2011
For nearly 20 years, New York City failed to require sex education in all public schools. Individual schools decided whether students were provided vital programs that could help them avoid disease and teenage pregnancy.
This school year that patchwork system will finally change, replaced bya new sex education requirement for all students in public middle and high school. In middle schools, preteenage students will be taught about puberty, sexuality, the benefits of abstinence, teenage pregnancy and issues like sexual stereotyping. In high school, those lessons will be offered with more depth and detail, with an emphasis on preventing pregnancy and diseases, including H.I.V./AIDS. High school students can already get free condoms from school health resource rooms, but now teachers will be required to explain how to use them.
The sex education push is part of an initiative by Mayor Michael Bloomberg to address the needs of young black and Latino men in the city. Dennis Walcott, the schools chancellor, said on Wednesday that new statistics helped to convince him and other officials that better sex education classes were necessary, especially in minority neighborhoods. Teenage pregnancy rates in those areas are far higher than in other parts of the city. And more than half of new H.I.V. cases in the city are in black and Hispanic men, Mr. Walcott said. Black and Hispanic youths have more sexual partners and are more susceptible to sexually transmitted diseases.
Parents will have the option to refuse to allow their children to attend classes on birth control. But school officials should make certain that most of the new curriculum is available to all students. Some youngsters are having sex at age 11. To protect their health and futures, as Mr. Walcott said, “we cannot stick our heads in the sand.”
The New York Times
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