We all remember sex ed in seventh grade, where it was awkward to giggle and weird not to. We were taught the basics of STIs, puberty, and the only bullet proof way not to get pregnant: abstinence. Looking back, is abstinence the best way educators can prepare kids for the future?

While abstinence-focused sex education gets the point across about how not to get pregnant, it doesn’t properly equip students with the knowledge to have healthy physical relationships. Forcing tweens to look at pictures of penises infected with genital warts only freaks people out, it doesn’t tell us how to make healthy choices about preventing STIs.

In all the health classes I have taken, sex is most commonly defined as vaginal intercourse, which is only the tip of the iceberg. Sex can be a whole variety of actions. Many educators turn a blind eye to the subject of oral sex or masturbation. These are probably the most common physical acts teens engage in besides kissing. Many teachers will briefly skim over the topic of “oral sex” and move on to pointing out where the uterus is, which leaves students to look to peers, the media, and pornography for answers.

Another issue with mainly talking about sex as vaginal intercourse is the fact that you need a male and a female to perform it. For many people, this leaves out the sex that they are going to engage in.

Although I think that sex ed has come a long way over the years, it still needs to be improved. In a 2006 publication of The Harvard Educational Review, Michelle Fine and Sara McClelland state that teaching solely abstinence is “a betrayal of our next generation, which is desperately in need of knowledge, conversation, and resources to negotiate the . . . terrain of sexuality in the 21st century.” Depriving teens of an open conversation about sex does not stop them from engaging in it, instead it makes students confused.