New York City Will Mandate Sex Education - will be required to take lessons on topics like how to use a condom -

New York City Will Mandate Sex Education - will be required to take lessons on topics like how to use a condom - 

For the first time in nearly two decades, students in New York City’s public middle and high schools will be required to take sex-education classes beginning this school year, using a curriculum that includes lessons on how to use a condom and the appropriate age for sexual activity.

The new mandate is part of a broader strategy the Bloomberg administration announced last week to improve the lives of black and Latino teenagers. According to city statistics, those teenagers are far more likely than their white counterparts to have unplanned pregnancies and contract sexually transmitted diseases.

“It’s obviously something that applies to all boys and all girls,” said Linda I. Gibbs, the deputy mayor for health and human services. “But when we look at the biggest disadvantages that kids in our city face, it is blacks and Latinos that are most affected by the consequences of early sexual behavior and unprotected sex.”

The change will bring a measure of cohesion to a patchwork system of programs largely chosen by school principals.

It will also bring to New York the roiling national debate about what, exactly, schools should teach students about sex.

Nationwide, one in four teenagers between 2006 and 2008 learned about abstinence without receiving any instruction in schools about contraceptive methods, according to an analysis by the Guttmacher Institute, which studies reproductive health. As of January, 20 states and the District of Columbia mandated sex and H.I.V. education in schools. An additional 12 states, New York included, required H.I.V. education only, according to a policy paper published by the institute.

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http://www.nytimes.com/2011/08/10/nyregion/in-new-york-city-a-new-mandate-on-sex-education.html?_r=1&emc=eta1