sex education for young people: a) helps them make good informed choices? b) just gives them ideas?

Definitely choice A! Sex can be good and bad, like so many things in life. If young people aren't prepared for it, it will end up being a bad thing.

I often compare sex to fire. Both are very good things that are necessary for survival, but only when one knows how to properly use them and take adequate precautions against any hazards. Most of the hazards brought on by fire will never be faced by the majority of children. This is probably because they are educated about it early in life ("Don't play with matches" "Stay away from the stove!" "Only YOU can prevent forest fires!" "Stop, drop and roll." etc) and come to respect it. And yet, when educating children about the dangers of fire, I have never heard someone say, "Hey...maybe we shouldn't teach them about this...they might get ideas and try to burn down the house." The same principle should be applied to sex ed. Who knows? Maybe there would be less STDs and teen pregnancies if children were educated about it before they got the drive to have sex. Too many are simply unprepared because people don't want to give them ideas.

Education is positive except when it crosses the line and becomes brainwashing. It's actually a very fine line but I think the key is educating without an agenda. Education informed by an agenda is nothing more than propaganda, so when you say "sex education" I'm not sure what you're referring to. If you're referring to the religious right's version of sex education that says everyone other than adult heterosexual couples looking to reproduce should abstain from sex, then I would say that's not education at all. If on the other hand you're referring to a form of education that teaches children to think critically about what makes them human (i.e., sexual urges are natural) and informs them around how and when to act upon those urges so as not to bring about unwelcome or undesirable consequences (i.e., babies having babies, contraction of STDs, etc.), then I'm all for that. Repression and ignorance is the enemy here and it's the reason that there's higher incidence of sexual assault and rape in countries where religious zealots teach Sex Ed 101 to their youth. And I wish that wasn't going on in the US, which proclaims itself to be a progressive nation, but unfortunately it is.

Sex Education makes better sense than Biology. How often do we get a reason to disect a frog in real life? Oh, A. Children already have the ideas, don't kid yourself.

A. If it is taught in an informative, educational way. They can get wrong ideas from movies, music, the internet, almost anywhere.

Helps them make good informed choices. Peer pressure thats y - it seems to override the teenage brain. Its better to teach them how to prevent catching stds and unwanted pregnancies because they are going to experiment whether we want them to or not. Its in the majority of advertisements and movies its unfortunately unavoidable so its best to prepare them and show them what can happen if they don't take care of themselves.

b definately.

I wish I hadn't had learned about sex until much later. I think my mom told me too early.

It did give me ideas. I was sucked in by curiosity and wonder of it all, until it filled my entire mind. I went online and looked for stuff about sex, different sex positions, I even found out what oral sex was. Now I feel so terrible about it and wish I had preserved my innocence.

The idea of sex can be obsessive, and should be told to children as late as possible, and by their parents, not by teachers.

a) sex education teaches people how to have safe sex

There are more teen pregnancies in communites that preach (teach is not the correct word in this case) "abstinence only".

A. to be more mature when they reached legal and practice sex.

A

you will never stop people having sex.