Giving Compass' Take:

• Sara Tabin argues that high schools should incorporate consent and rape culture into existing sex education curricula to help prevent sexual harassment in college. 

• What are the challenges in adding these discussion topics to high school curricula? How can funders help overcome barriers to the implementation of this type of curricula?

• Read about how sex education can vary significantly from state to state.

Utah, my home state, has a reputation for conservatism and, with it, abstinence-based sex education. I grew up in Summit County, a sliver of blue on the otherwise red electoral map. When I was in high school, students talked openly about feminism and sex and LGBTQ rights. If any part of the state could have been expected to teach sex education properly, it should have been here. But even in our liberal bubble, no one taught us about consent.

In high school, as part of our general health curriculum, we talked a bit about healthy relationships and learned, briefly, about contraception. But the notions of bodily autonomy, bystander intervention and the fact that no one has the right to pressure you for sex, ever, were absent from the curriculum. We learned about alcoholism and drug use, but not about incapacitation as it applies to sex. Concepts like “victim blaming” and “rape culture” were never part of the lessons.

The accusations of sexual misconduct levied against Brett Kavanaugh, the Supreme Court nominee, finally drew national attention to sexual violence in high school. But concern alone will not fix our broken culture. Comprehensive sex ed in middle and high schools might.

Incomplete sex education isn’t just Utah’s problem. A 2018 study from the Center for American Progress found that only eight states include consent and sexual assault in their standards for sexual education.

Discussions of campus rape frequently center on important steps like changing a culture of sexual entitlement, ending power imbalances that protect perpetrators and increasing punishments for those who commit sexual assaults. But the sexual climates of U.S. universities cannot be disentangled from high schools, and the discussions should begin years before students start university.

Read the full article about sex education in high school by Sara Tabin at The Hechinger Report.