Now a senior at Winchester Thurston School, I learned what sex was in the fifth grade by watching a series of cartoon videos in my science class. We were too embarrassed to ask questions and too grossed out to think it had anything to do with us, so we simply studied the facts in hopes of passing our test. When the subject came up again in seventh grade, we suddenly had questions, and none were too stupid to answer.

So it wasn't until high school, with the influx of new students from all backgrounds, that I realized not everyone had received the same sort of education. Suddenly we had an underground information trade where we answered one another's questions the best we could. If no one knew, we searched the Internet, passed on stories we had heard from friends or just lived without knowing.

That is, until 11th-grade biology. Whenever the subject came up in class, which it was bound to do during lessons on human systems, meiosis or communicable diseases, and after the giggles subsided, our teacher would answer our questions with the seriousness of the biological facts. Her respect gave us the confidence to ask questions about the mysteries of our own anatomy, both inside and outside of the classroom.

I recently signed the petition for comprehensive sex education in the Pittsburgh Public Schools. My decision wasn't based on the usual arguments, the ones about information keeping kids safe from disease and harm. The people on the other side of the fence, the proponents of abstinence-only sex education, have the same argument and the same desire to keep teenagers free of sexually transmitted diseases and unwanted pregnancies.

If I think about it only in terms of these arguments, it is easy to get confused about who is right and who is wrong, especially when both sides want the same thing: safe and healthy children.

But I want every one of my peers to have an honest understanding of themselves and their world. To this day I remember a handful of funny stories about my friends' misconceptions about the human body -- one boy didn't understand where different wastes were excreted from the female body, and one girl didn't know how they got a camera into a woman's uterus. But there's something sad about these stories, too, something about not knowing yourself and having to raise your hand in class to find out. Luckily these two kids were set straight before high school.

When the group of confused kids came into the high school, though, some of the myths that circulated were wild. One new friend admitted that when she was younger she thought babies were made when adults kissed one another on the lips. Now she knew some stuff, but not everything. In her eagerness to learn more, she would have scooped up any story we gave her, no matter how preposterous or gross. Raised on the motto "Think also of the comforts and rights of others," we gave her the truth, or what we knew of it.

I wish she could have learned more earlier, not because she was in danger of being impregnated, but because she had to live with fears induced by cloudy information and the embarrassment of having to search every corner for the truth. The facts that my teachers entrusted me with at different stages in my life made me feel like I was respected. They kept me from finding out about sex from an older sibling intent on scaring me or from a friend who had only learned about it second-hand herself.

When I have a kid, I will give him or her the self-respect that comes with knowledge.