Should Schools Teach About Healthy, Romantic Relationships?
By Tim Walker
Very few school boards, superintendents, and principals welcome the prospect of dealing with issues around sex education, often an invitation to controversy and a divided community. If three Harvard University researchers had their way, however, districts across the country would not only teach sex education, but also retool it to focus on healthy relationships.Sex education courses in most states (22 states and the District of Columbia mandate it) tend to be built around some form of abstinence education. Thirty-seven states require coverage of abstinence, compared to the 18 that require information on contraception, according to the Guttmacher Institute. While sex ed should continue to address these specific issues, say Richard Weissbourd, Amelia Peterson, and Emily Weinstein in the latest issue of Phi Delta Kappan, they argue that it’s time to shift focus away from “self-control” issues and what they call “disaster prevention” – preventing teen pregnancy, sexually transmitted diseases, etc.
Instead, the authors believe sex education should primarily be about helping young people navigate through the rocky emotional terrain of romantic relationships.
“Failure to prepare young people for healthy love and sex can reverberate destructively throughout their lives,” they write. “Divorce (which ends nearly half of all first marriages), constant marital conflict or quieter marital misery, and the inability to even form a relationship all reflect this failure. Sexual education would be far more meaningful and productive if it focused on developing, maintaining, and ending romantic and