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Defining Rights-Based Sexuality Education

Author: Guttmacher Institute

Defining Rights-Based Sexuality Education. 2014 https://www.guttmacher.org/perspectives50/defining-rights-based-sexuality-education

Abstinence-only and abstinence-plus sex education have been the mainstay of American school-based sex education programs for decades. However, these approaches don’t have much in the way of evidence to suggest that they reduce the risk of STDs or unintended pregnancy, which is their purported aim. Given this lack of evidence, some sex education advocates have been calling for a new paradigm, one that takes a broader view of sex education and emphasizes healthy sexual development. Nancy F. Berglas and colleagues examined a potential new approach—rights-based sexuality education. In an attempt to create a definition of the concept, the researchers interviewed 21 U.S. and international sex education experts and described their findings in a 2014 Perspectives article.

In general, the experts agreed to four core elements of rights-based sexuality education: that young people’s sexual rights, which are rooted in their human rights, should be supported; that programmatic goals should go beyond the prevention of pregnancy and STDs to helping individuals create healthier lives overall; that program content should address contextual issues related to youths’ sexual decision making; and that the teaching should be interactive and youth-centered. Interestingly, the experts also agreed that such programming might be a hard sell in the U.S., where parents’ rights tend to take priority over youths’ rights.

The researchers acknowledged that many questions regarding the implementation and impact of a rights-based approach to sexuality education remain to be answered, but suggested that the creation of a clearly articulated definition points the way for future research and begins the process by which this approach can be measured and evaluated.

DMU Timestamp: February 03, 2020 23:30





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