Where and how, if at all, should sex education be conducted?

I order to express my opinion, let me tell you what sexual education I received through my schooling experience. The first time sexual education was conducted was when I was in 6th grade, when I would have been around the age of 12 or 13. I was in a Private Catholic School for my 6th grade year, so you can imagine how limited the education was, as the Bible preaches abstinence, and not having sex before marriage. The next time I was exposed to sexual education was not until my 8th grade year in the public school.

Here, we got more in depth on the topics, and the topic of safe sex was spoken of with more clarity.  Then it was 10th grade health class where we learned how to have safe sex, so to prevent any STI's, and of course abstinence was the only option that would protect you 100%  from getting pregnant or receiving STI's. This shows that I received, with all the different years of education, approximately 3/4 to 1 year of sexual education. In my opinion, this is FAR too little exposure to sex ed. As statistics show, teenagers are contacting STI's, and getting pregnant at increasingly younger ages. I currently have 6 classmates, that have, or will soon have their first child, and their all under the age of 21!!!

This is quite alarming to me. SO, to get back to the focus of this discussion topic, I believe we as students, should begin receiving sexual education as early as 4th or 5th grade, and should continue to receive it throughout the rest of our middle school and high school years, if not every year, every other, or every couple of years. Sex is something that is natural. It is something that we cannot, due to our nature, help but to be curious about, or to crave, and depend on. I think it would be naive to think that children are not experimenting at younger, and younger ages. I also think that instead of placing so much attention on abstinence, which I DO still agree with, we must talk more in depth about safe sex, because honestly, kids, teenagers, adults, we ALL are curious, and end up experimenting at one time or another..