Sex education under question after Mississippi high school teacher Sherre Ferguson fired for letting student put condom onto cucumber

In 2012, Mississippi had the third highest teen birth rate in the US as more than 4,700 girls aged between 15 through to 19 gave birth - at a rate of approximately 13 per day

(Rex Features)

Sex education in America has come under scrutiny after a high school teacher was allegedly “put on leave” for allowing a student to put a condom on a cucumber during a safe sex practices demonstration in class.

According to a Change.org petition which called for the teacher to be reinstated, Sherre Ferguson - an English teacher at Starkville High School in Mississippi - was “put on leave from the school” and “told to gather her things and go home” after the student chose to discuss the role of a sexologist for a career day task.

The relatives of the student in question who began the petition said: “We are not sure where Ms Ferguson’s actions crossed the line. We have discovered Mississippi has a law forbidding teachers from presenting sex ed materials in class. We are not aware of any such law forbidding students from doing so.

“Further, we have learned there is a ban in Mississippi on educators conducting condom demonstrations within the context of an abstinence-plus sex education program but, as this was a series of career day presentations, we are unclear as to whether this policy would apply to a student’s job demonstration.”

The family also added that, if a job talk on sexology was deemed sex education then, according to the same policy, “our niece would have had to give it twice - once to male students and once to female.”

With just over 2,800 signatures, the petition was successful and Ms Ferguson was allowed back into class to teach again after a march from angry parents and students also reportedly took place outside the school. In a statement from the school district, administrators said the condom demonstration violated Mississippi law and school board policy, reported AP News.

However, it added: “The resulting personnel issues (go) beyond that scope to include how the employee involved responded during an inquiry regarding the presentation.” Now, though, the way sex education is being taught in US schools - or the lack of - is now under the microscope.

According to the National Conference of State Legislatures (NCSL), Mississippi had the third highest teen birth rate in the United States in 2012, with more than 4,700 girls aged between 15 through to 19 giving birth - at a startling rate of approximately 13 per day.

Read the CDC’s statistics on Mississippi’s state health profile 2013:

The NCSL also added how, in 2010, the public cost of teen childbearing in Mississippi was $137 million (around £90.8 million).

On top of this, the US Department of Health and Human Services’ Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) figures show that, in 2012, Mississippi ranked first out of all 50 states for having the highest rates of both chlamydia and gonorrhea infections, with chlamydia among women being 2.5 times greater than among men.

Speaking with news site Mic, one of America’s most sought after experts in human sexuality and sexology, Dr Logan Levkoff, described how she wasn’t surprised with the school’s strong reaction to the student’s in-class demonstration.

She explained how, upon hearing the word “sex,” people automatically make the assumption pupils are being taught “how to” when, instead, they should acknowledge “a holistic look at an entire person.”