Apr 16, 2013 3 min read

It used to be that all too many people weren’t versed in “the facts of life” until “Here Comes the Bride” was ringing in their ears.

Discussing human sexuality honestly and openly was once a taboo, subject to squirming, fidgeting and embarrassment. For centuries, intercourse was considered a “marital duty,” and a probably apocryphal legend had it that Queen Victoria once advised her daughter to “lie back and think of England” when the “marital duty” was being dutifully carried out.

That sex was clouded in mystery led to much misinformation being passed back and forth on the playground, and as rates of teenage pregnancy started to increase in the 1960s in both the United States and other Western, industrialized nations, sex education courses began to be instituted in high schools, junior highs and, in some instances, the latter grades of elementary schools.

Instruction about human sexuality has received widespread public support, with many parents saying it clears the path for discussions about sex at home, and studies have supported its effectiveness – a 2005 report in the Journal of Adolescent Health found that teenagers who received formal sex education were more likely to delay sexual activity and, once they were sexually active, more likely to practice safe sex.

Despite the fact that we live in a culture that’s much more frank and much less inhibited about sexuality than it once was, sex education nevertheless continues to have vociferous opponents. Although it has one of the highest rates of teen pregnancy in the country, legislators in Texas are looking to place further restrictions on sex education curriculums that are already laden with constraints, while in Arkansas the state Senate last week voted to defund sex education programs in high schools that are operated by Planned Parenthood. Like Texas, Arkansas has one of the highest rates of teen pregnancy in the country.

And in Peters Township Monday night, a group of parents addressed the school board, in often heated terms, about a program on human growth and development being taught in the middle school by Mary Jo Podgurski, a well-regarded nurse and educator who oversees Washington Hospital’s Teen Outreach program and contributes a weekly column to the Observer-Reporter. Although the classes are limited in the course of the school year to two 40-minute sessions for fifth-graders and three 40-minute sessions for sixth-graders, and require parents to sign a permission slip in order for students to participate, some community members portrayed the classes as the portal to Sodom and Gomorrah.

One parent described the classes as “an all-out assault on family values” and expressed her fear that they would encourage children to engage in certain types of sexual acts. Another parent said he preferred “Bible-based information” that puts “God’s interest first.”

According to a story that appeared in this newspaper Tuesday, those protesting the classes were less than courteous when supporters spoke out on behalf of Podgurski and sex education, interrupting with unseemly outbursts.

Since parental acquiescence is needed for students to attend the courses in the first place, this seems less an attempt by sex education foes to cover their own children’s eyes than it is to narrow the vision of every student in the district. As educators and administrators in Peters refashion the sex education curriculum, they would be wise to keep the interests of all students in mind and not bend to the hysteria of zealots.