The Importance of Sexual Education at the Right Time

We humans are sexual beings and procreating is our business, whether or not we consciously recognize this from a gene’s eye perspective, it is what we do, and everything leads us to do so. Our bodies begin preparing at a relatively early age to carry out the ability to reproduce, and it has even been argued that this age is becoming younger and younger as puberty is reached at earlier ages. In middle school, I remember the anomaly we experienced in the locker room seeing one of our peers matured to that of a young man slightly ahead of us, or the erection protruding from another’s gym shorts and the horror and embarrassment experienced as the class wasted no time pointing it out. The bottom line was that none of us had any real formal sexual education, save for the few who may have received more from their parents, but there was a mismatch, and some of these situations, arguably, could have been less of a distraction if we were all a little bit more educated.

Sex education needs to start young, not only for educational purposes but for a child’s safety, well being, and awareness. I recall at an early age being instructed by my mother what was and was not an appropriate touch, unfortunately, that is where it ended. The rest was left to me and some other kids in the back of the playground exploring each other differences, and when we were caught, there were harsh and frightening consequences that were never clearly communicated to us. So began the age of taboo and misunderstandings, all we knew was that something was wrong and we got yelled at, and nothing further for nearly ten years until the later stages of middle school and finally high school.

In between those years so much had changed, and it was sort of just trial and error, and hearsay. There were the pornographic magazines distributed around school, myths galore about what exactly went on with girls, and masturbation topics; all of which were still in the realm of unexplained taboos. Not to...