Instead of my own thoughts about the schools, I’ve invited several Emmaus High School students to share their on-the-ground perspective. Sadie Wallace is a senior and member of EHS girls soccer team, Debate Team, Mock Trial Team, Unified Track, and Vice-President of Habit for Humanity. She lives in Wescosville with her parents and three younger sisters.
by Sadie Wallace
There is a serious gap in our education at Emmaus High School: the sex education component of the current health curriculum. It currently falls far short of what students need in order to be informed, safe, and responsible. Students are taught about STIs, abstinence, and consent – all important, but not enough. As teenagers continue into adulthood, we also need comprehensive, medically accurate information about reproductive health, contraception, and healthy relationships and communication. Without these in the curriculum, students turn to social media and the internet, where misinformation is widespread and often dangerous. Even EHS teachers have acknowledged that our current curriculum does not help students identify credible sources of information on these topics, leaving them vulnerable to online content that presents inaccurate ideas about consent and safety.
The state standards for the health curriculum have not been revised since the early 2000s, which are the standards we hold our curriculum to today. We must as a district go beyond this to give students the best education. The consequences of the current gap are real and have hit our own school with teen pregnancies just in the past year. Some students in Emmaus High School are engaging in unsafe sex practices, and it is frustrating that students may be engaging in sexual activity without a complete understanding of contraception, its effects, and how it really works. It is time the EPSD didn’t make sex-ed such a taboo subject and teach students here the education that they need. We must implement an education system that has been proven to be effective.
According to the 2024 study published by the Berkeley Journal of Gender, Law, and Justice, comprehensive sex education increases contraception use, lowers STI rates, and fosters healthier relationships. Yet our curriculum is still abstinence based, a model that, according to experts at the Ballard Center, has a very little impact on student choices and decisions.
I conducted a survey at Emmaus High School last year that showed over half of students felt they did not receive comprehensive sex education in their current health classes. Meanwhile, 80% of teachers surveyed said that they would want their own children to receive comprehensive sex ed in high school.
Comprehensive sex education doesn’t just cover biology; it builds skills. This type of curriculum empowers students to set boundaries, identify unhealthy relationships, understand consent, and make informed decisions. It creates the safe space needed to have uncomfortable but necessary conversation, especially as teenagers.
The state is scheduled to update their health curriculum standards in two years. Therefore, our school will be updating its own health curriculum in about three. I will have graduated by then, but I strongly urge the East Penn School District to start thinking now about how to include comprehensive, inclusive, and medically accurate sex education in the health curriculum. If we as a district are serious about preparing students for real life, then we must be serious about giving them the knowledge and skills necessary to make safe decisions to take care of themselves and others.
Here are some of the sources I found most helpful when learning more about this issue:
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