What is Sex Education: Sex education helps people gain the information, skills, and motivation to make healthy decisions about sex and sexuality. Planned Parenthood is the nation’s largest provider of sex education, reaching 1.2 million people a year.

Definition of Sex Education

In the Standards for Sexuality Education in Europe the concept of ‘holistic sexuality education’ is defined as follows:

Learning about the cognitive, emotional, social, interactive and physical aspects of sexuality. Sexuality education starts early in childhood and progresses through adolescence and adulthood. It aims at supporting and protecting sexual development. It gradually equips and empowers children and young people with information, skills and positive values to understand and enjoy their sexuality, have safe and fulfilling relationships and take responsibility for their own and other people’s sexual health and well-being. (WHO 2010)

Facts About Comprehensive Sex Education

Sex education is high quality teaching and learning about a broad variety of topics related to sex and sexuality, exploring values and beliefs about those topics and gaining the skills that are needed to navigate relationships and manage one’s own sexual health.

Comprehensive sexuality education refers to K-12 programs that cover a broad range of topics related to:

• Human Development (including reproduction, puberty, sexual orientation, and gender identity)
• Relationships (including families, friendships, romantic relationships and dating)
• Personal Skills (including communication, negotiation, and decision-making)
• Sexual Behavior (including abstinence and sexuality throughout life)
• Sexual Health (including sexually transmitted diseases, contraception, and pregnancy)
• Society and Culture (including gender roles, diversity, and sexuality in the media)
• Several important resources exist to guide comprehensive sexuality education implementation,

Public opinion

A survey conducted in Britain, Canada and the United States by Angus Reid Public Opinion in November 2011 asked adult respondents to look back to the time when they were teenagers, and describe how useful several sources were in enabling them to learn more about sex. By far, the largest proportion of respondents in the three countries (74% in Canada, 67% in Britain and 63% in the United States) said that conversations with friends were “very useful” or “moderately useful.” The next reputable source was the media (television, books, movies, magazines), mentioned by three-in-five British (65%) and Canadians (62%) and more than half of Americans (54%) as useful.