Sex Education: The Nitty Gritty
People think that sex education refers to children in schools reading textbooks about how their bodies are growing and developing and how to respond to new hormones that have begun coursing through them and the new things that are happening. Well at least that’s how it should be, but today many schools across America are limiting their sexual education classes if they have any at all, which another handful of schools either don’t or outright refuse to provide. In thirty states sexual education is not mandatory to be provided in schools and nineteen states in schools that provide sex education they must teach about abstinence but not about contraception. You would think that contraception would be one of the first topics discussed in a class about one of the main things that contraception is used for. So, with the lack of sexual education in schools so many teenagers and adults alike are going around with a warped perspective on sexual education and contraception and in a fast-moving age where 90 percent of information is digitized, kids and teenagers are being exposed to content that has an incredibly dramatized and incorrect presentation on what having a sexually active life is like.

Now, I was one of the lucky ones in the fact that my high school required all freshman to take a mandatory health course, which is more than what a lot of people can say. However, the class didn’t focus on what it should of for kids like me which is things that could and were relevant to my age group. Things like STI’s, normal and abnormal bodily responses to sex, menstruation in females, and most importantly, options on contraception. We spent one class on things that should have been the main focus which in turn lead to me being horribly misinformed about having a sexually active life. Sexual education in America has been on a decline for a long time but people are so consumed with political and other forms of media that they are missing a hugely important part of the development of the next generation of people in this country. At one of the most influential and transformative moments in their lives, kids are being left to essentially fend for themselves when it comes to proper development. As well as people don’t realize that misinformation about sexual education can not only impact someone’s lives now, but it can also affect their adult life. Now, their lives could be impacted by teen pregnancy, the spreading of STI’s and many other things that comes with not being taught proper sexual education and information about their bodies.

The decline of sexual education in America and the increase of digitized media is leading to misinformed youths and incorrect development. This issue isn’t something that can be pushed to the side anymore as it affects the future of our country. People need to be informed about what is going on within them and how to take care of themselves and manage their relationships.
The reason I chose this topic for my essay is because I feel that the sexualized digital media that people are exposed to today is giving a lot of young people a warped perspective of what having a sexually active life is like. My topic is important to society because the misinformation people are receiving today is causing a slew of problems among teenagers as well as adults today. I used rhetorical devices in this essay by using comprehensive data and an anecdote from my personal life to gain a connection to my audience through relating with one another. I wanted to use a story from my own life as a rhetorical device, so it would create a connection between my life and my audience from personal experience if they had a health class and even if they didn’t, my story was comprehensive enough to relate to even to an outsider. I have a couple graphs that I’m going to use in my final essay that help solidify my points I made in my essay. Rhetorical devices are used by me and other authors to assist in expressing the point their trying to make and the opinions they are trying to express. My rhetorical devices I used are anecdotes and some lighthearted comedy to keep my reader engaged. I also keep my essay moving and expressing many different ideas in relation to the topic I chose to keep my reader engaged as well as attempting to not repeat myself. The media I chose is accurate with credible sources and is updated and recent in the context of my graphs and text-based data I used. The use of media in my essay is important because it shows proof of the data I referenced in my essay.