What Is Wrong With Sex Education In America? Everything.

Editors’ Note:
This fall countless teachers across the country are tasked with teaching sex ed. You probably know one. We do. On a summer road trip she shared some of her anxieties with us, the biggest one being: What could she teach that actually mattered to these students? What did they already know? What didn’t they know? What did we wish someone had taught us when we were that age?

That got us thinking. It’s obvious that sex ed isn’t working the way it’s supposed to. Nothing any of us learned in school was ultimately relevant to our lives. Most of what we know about sex and relationships we figured out on our own, by trial and error.

And, perhaps because of the avoidance of frank conversations about sex, kids have been left to navigate these murky waters on their own. We have more sexual assault and rape charges on college campuses than ever before. We have more states establishing “Yes means Yes” laws as if no wasn’t clear enough.

How can we refresh sex ed? How can we make it useful and meaningful? We’ve invited a handful of writers to write letters to their younger selves: What do they wish someone had told them back then? What wisdom do they want to share?

We’ll be running these letters over the next 10 days in Bright, and today, we’re bringing you the first of the series. Our hope is that this initiative will bring together a wide range of voices in conversations about sex ed syllabi, about what “comprehensive” sex ed means, or what “inclusive” should look like. We want you to share ideas, wrestle with thorny problems, and crowdsource solutions.

If you could go back and teach your naïve teenage self about sex and relationships, what would you say? Please click the response button below to share your letter. Or post your sex ed curriculum. Tag it with “LetsTalkAboutSexEd.”

Thank you.