Sex Ed Needs a Makeover

Sex education is boring. I say this as someone teaching in high schools and I will say it again: the way we teach sex is boring and outdated. Sex education needs a makeover if it is going to remain relevant and effective.

I spent yesterday at a high school giving a talk about safer sex. Perhaps it was the sunshine or the leftover Halloween candy, but the kids were on one rowdy ride yesterday. Nothing could calm them down, not even the verbal castigation thrown down by a school director. There was only one moment when they paused and payed attention: during a video explaining viruses. I watched them with great fascination as they became focused on the information.

The school directors talked to me later and apologized for the students' behavior but I was grateful for the insight. I don't think we can use simple lectures to compete with the multimedia onslaught defining the new generations. One of my undergraduate professors was onto something when he divided his class between documentaries, online articles, academic journals and dynamic lectures. Simply stating a fact or idea will not make it stick, not when our minds are constantly processing high volumes of information presented in much prettier packages.

I want to mak sex education shinier. I want to use available media to explain complicated ideas about sex and create songs to make facts stick. Whatever we are doing to promote safer sex and sexual literacy is working but it needs to work better.