School-taught sex education, although sometimes controversial, is an important part of preparing adolescents to engage in safe relationships in their future. However, Kaneland students are getting much of this vital information later than Illinois guidelines recommend. For student health, I believe the Kaneland district should revise its sex education curriculum to teach students key topics earlier and to better align with state guidance.

Sex education is more than just teaching about sexual intercourse. It encompasses topics such as communication, consent, contraceptive methods, healthy relationships, human development, gender identity, self-esteem, sexual orientation and more. Access to this education is very important and should not be withheld or postponed as teenagers are maturing and exploring relationships.

As explained by the Guttmacher Institute, a sexual and reproductive health research organization, “Sex education is vital to adolescents’ healthy sexual development, and young people have the right to information that is medically accurate, inclusive, and age and culturally appropriate in order to make informed decisions about their sexual behavior, relationships and reproductive choices.”

Although the Illinois State Board of Education (ISBE) website shows that sex education is optional for schools to provide, Kaneland does incorporate it into some health classes, along with teaching the state-mandated Erin’s Law. Kaneland is a non-abstinence based school, according to Director of Educational Services 6-12 James Horne.

To develop the health curriculum, a team of health teachers, instructional coaches and administrators work together to identify content based on state and national standards. They primarily look at the Illinois State Goals for Physical Development and Health.

“That’s what we use to develop it,” Horne said. “It’s at the foundation of how the curriculum has been developed.”

These standards contain little mention of many sex education topics. The Illinois General Assembly does, however, identify specific sex education standards in its State Goals for Learning and Learning Standards. These standards, officially called the Illinois Learning Standards for Comprehensive Personal Health and Safety and Sexual Health Education​, are the same as the national standards. Although still optional, these standards could be used to tailor the sex education at Kaneland to best align with national guidance. On a district checklist for implementing sex education instruction, the ISBE writes, “Schools may choose and adapt the age and developmentally appropriate, medically accurate, complete, culturally appropriate, inclusive, and trauma-informed curriculum that meet the needs of their community.”

When I looked at these standards, I noticed a significant disparity between what Kaneland Harter Middle School teaches and what is recommended for those grade levels.

While a few topics are included in the Illinois State Goals for Physical Development and Health standards, including STDs and HIV, the functions of male and female reproductive systems, puberty, the fertility cycle, and dating behaviors and violence, many topics are not. And when I compared the KHMS seventh and eighth grade health proficiency tables to the national standards, even fewer topics were explicitly outlined. While in-class instruction might cover more than what is written, the proficiency tables only include the topics of puberty, communicable diseases (which include STDs), healthy relationships and communication and refusal skills. 

Important concepts including contraceptive methods, sexual orientation and identity, gender identity and expression, pregnancy testing and options, and others are not covered.

Although Kaneland does not base its curriculum on these standards, the state and national sex education standards do list what age groups certain topics are best suited for. And when I compared the standards with what is being taught at Kaneland, the majority of the content that is suggested for the middle school age group isn’t even introduced until high school. The first time Kaneland students are learning about some topics, such as contraceptive methods, is in their ninth grade health class, when they are 14 or 15 years old. 

For some kids, though, this is already after they’ve become sexually active. Kaneland High School health teacher Jenna Thorp agrees.

“I would think it would be naive to just assume that people are not being sexually active [in middle school],” Thorp said.

As a teenager, I’ve heard my fair share of stories from my friends and classmates. Some teenagers, including middle schoolers, are certainly having sex. What concerns me and should concern parents and school administrators, though, is how unsafe this sex is. I’ve witnessed the panic of pregnancy scares, heard tales of unprotected sex and even had to educate a peer that she could not get pregnant from performing oral sex.

So, teens are clearly engaging in sexual activity. But are they educated on the risks beforehand?

The Guttmacher Institute reports that “among teens reporting penile-vaginal intercourse, fewer than half (43% of females and 47% of males) received this instruction before they first had sex.” This is a concerning statistic because if teens haven’t received sex education instruction before they are engaging in sexual activity, they might not know how to protect themselves against pregnancy or sexually transmitted diseases.

A common misconception is that teaching sex education will promote engaging in sexual activity or encourage students to begin sexual activity earlier than if they had not received sex education instruction. However, this is false. 

The World Health Organization states that “young people are more likely to delay the onset of sexual activity – and when they do have sex, to practice safer sex – when they are better informed about their sexuality, sexual health and their rights.” So, if anything, teaching sex education at the middle school level might actually delay sexual activity. Parents are supportive of this, too.

According to a 2023 poll by Planned Parenthood, “84 percent of parents supported having sex education taught in middle school.” However, some parents are still uncomfortable with their child learning these topics.

“When we get parent emails, it’s usually on one of the sex ed units,” Thorp said. “Either they are uncomfortable with the content, or they think that we’re talking about it a lot.”

If parents or students are not comfortable with students learning about sex education, the ISBE and Kaneland Handbook both state that students do not have to participate in sex education instruction if their parents opt them out.

It’s important to note that KHMS health instruction is limited to one-quarter classes during a student’s seventh and eighth grade years. Quarters average 43 days each, providing little time for expansive education. 

“When you go through and you identify your priorities, there are things that are focused heavily upon and then there are things that are, you know, probably not as heavily focused on,” Horne said.

Adding a sixth grade section or extending the class to be semester-long, like at Kaneland High School, are ways of incorporating more sex education instruction.

Insufficient sex education isn’t just a problem affecting Kaneland. According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention’s (CDC) 2022 school health profiles, only 24.2% of U.S. schools taught all 22 of the identified sexual health topics in grades 6, 7 or 8. Illinois came in even lower with just 19.9% of schools teaching all topics. While comprehensive sex education at the middle school level isn’t necessarily implemented at every Illinois school, it should not be avoided in our district.

Do parents and administrators want to take a chance and hope their child isn’t having sex until after they receive sex education? Or will teenagers do it anyways, whether or not they’ve learned how to be safe? To me, educated decisions are always better than uneducated ones. Teenagers should have access to all of the important information they need to make safe decisions, and educating them early is key to preventing risky choices later in their teenage years. 

Thorp also believes that access to sex education is important because some topics, such as contraception, are relevant to adolescents for reasons other than sexual activity.

“I’ve always had the stance that I think it’s good to educate and to understand,” Thorp said. “Contraceptive methods, like hormonal methods, aren’t just used for sexual activity. So I think that it is good for females to understand and know what happens to their body.”

The Kaneland health curriculum is up for review next year, which could bring shifts to the current curriculum.

“There’s always the potential for change any time the curriculum is reviewed,” Horne said.

My hope is that more sex education topics can be incorporated into the middle school health curriculum to provide students with the best chances of safe and healthy relationships in their future. Giving students necessary information before they become sexually active is crucial to their health and is a needed change in our district.