A University of Florida study presented Monday at the American Public Health Association’s meeting shows that sex education programs in Florida’s public schools vary widely in content and often are not allocated much class time.

Although the content of programs was mostly aligned with the state’s requirement of abstinence-only education, the content of programs varied by region.

Teachers in North Florida were twice as likely as teachers in Central Florida and three times as likely as those in South Florida to teach an abstinence-only curriculum.

“Most people are aware that there are major cultural differences between, say, Miami and Tallahassee,” Frank Bandiera [a research team member] said. “What we found in terms of sex education, though, is that these places may as well be on different planets.”

There were also differences in the sources of curricula.

“More than half of sex educators used a ‘locally developed curriculum,’” Brian Dodge [a lead investigator] said. “In reality this could be anything. Respondents to our survey reported using everything from formal state guidelines to random Internet information and outdated county curricula. In short, there appears to be no uniformity in terms of underlying value systems or philosophical foundations for sex education in Florida.”

Teachers also reported that less than one-quarter of overall class time was allocated to sex education and that it was often taught as part of another course.

I thought the study’s finding that in a third of the schools, parents need to opt in, rather than opt out, for their children to receive sex education was also interesting. Although I understand the desire to give parents greater control over what their children are exposed to, I think it opens the possibility that parents who support sex education in schools but may not be as aware of the possibilities will miss out. The parents need to not only be aware of the programs, but also be highly motivated and actively seek them out for their children.

This study also seems to confirm the general belief that states can vary widely in their sex education curricula and sometimes not even offer it because it’s not federally mandated.

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