Sex education in schools is often a controversial subject. On the one hand, a child’s parents may feel like they should be the only source of knowledge that their child has about things like sex. True, school is here to help better prepare students for the future.

You may be on the fence about this yourself. However, the blunt truth is that sex education is highly essential for all of your students. Want to know why? Keep reading to learn the answers!

For many parents (and some teachers), the desire to avoid sex education is a very naive one. A simple goal drives them: “if we do not tell them about it, they will not find out about it anytime soon.”

Many would argue that this is naive because there is more information about sex on the internet than ever before. With a few clicks, students have access to everything from lurid online message boards to full-blown videos.

In other words? Those students will be learning about sex with you or without you. And many of the things they will learn online will be filled with dangerous misinformation.

Sex education in school is a chance for teachers to do what they do best: offer quality information that helps to make students’ lives better.

What if students only learned some aspects of a discipline like mathematics? Pretty soon, everything falls apart. Teachers understand that knowledge “scaffolds.” Missing out on a single important lesson can undermine everything else that comes later.

Here’s a sentence you probably thought you’d never read: sex is a lot like mathematics. What we mean is that students need to get a comprehensive education to understand the bigger picture. While students may learn about sex from things they watch online, they are certainly not getting a broad education.

That leads to problems like modern issues involving sexual consent. Students think they know all about sex because they understand the physical mechanics of it. However, they have typically not learned about the psychological and emotional aspects of sex.

Simply put, without sex education in schools, most students will never receive comprehensive sexual knowledge.

Sometimes, it can be difficult to quantify the importance of education. How can we “prove” that education is “working?” In the case of sex education, we can look at a reduction in things like sexually-transmitted diseases and infections.

Again, a lack of sex education in schools does not mean that students are not having sex. However, it does mean that many of them are likelier to have unsafe sex.which can lead to STDs and STIs.

However, schools that offer comprehensive sexual education and offer things like free contraception see a general reduction in STDs and STIs within their community. And, of course, a decrease in teen pregnancy. Ultimately, sex education is crucial because it helps make everyone safer.

There is one bit of advice that we offer to parents and teachers alike: be a good role model. The idea goes that if we want students to act in a certain way, we need to show them how to behave.

That idea is more complicated with sex education. Many of the opponents of sex education in schools believe, for instance, that informing students about sex is tantamount to encouraging them to have sex.

However, this isn’t true. As we said before, many teenagers are already having sex. Instead of thinking that we can keep them from having sex, school is a time where we can promote healthy ideas about sex and sexuality.

The right advice here and now can save students from a lifetime of damaging relationships and emotional manipulation.

Pop quiz: what made you want to be a teacher in the first place? The chances are that you just liked learning. The old saying happens to be true: “knowledge is power.” And the best kind of learning is learning that empowers the student.

However, students don’t always feel empowered by knowledge. Students, the world over like to complain that they may never use the lessons they are learning.

But when it comes to sex education, knowledge is useful. In some cases, it is immediately useful! It offers practical information about a topic students care deeply. And in many cases, they may have nowhere else they can get the information.

And these lessons give them better knowledge and control of their bodies. It does not get much more empowering than that!

It may feel uncomfortable to teach children about sex. But trust us: a lifetime without proper sexual education will be much more uncomfortable for them. As teachers, this is our chance to make a real difference in our students’ lives.