high school sex ed: what was yours like?

A couple of years later we had a guy in a menage-a-trois come and talk about living with AIDS which was a lot more educational but it was fairly painful for me to have to listen to all the homophobes discussing it afterwards (ie. neither education programme had much effect on them).

To this day -- and I am absolutely not kidding about this -- I have a ridiculous paranoia about genital warts, encouraged by the later discovery that they're actually tiny or invisible and some exaggerated estimation that 50% of college-aged American women have them. I mean, I know I don't have genital warts and I'm not particularly worried about them and if you're male you'd probably never even know it if you did, but that's precisely the paranoia thing: occasionally I'll see a bit of something on there out of the corner of my eye and my mind immediately goes "IT COULD BE GENITAL WARTS!!"

The boys' talks were done by the Headmaster Himself and were hastily re-christened 'pervy talks' (except by the Biology teacher who called them the 'pox & clap' talks). There were lots of colour slides of ppl with syphilis, gonorrhea, scabies mites ect ect. But the headmaster revealed himself to be a bit of a perv anyway with a long involved story about watching a canoodling couple through his caravan window whilst on holiday. I remember the story concluded with the line "And while we were eating our lemon meringue pie, he was probably washing out his handkerchief and hanging it out to dry."

I'm not altogether sure of the educational benefit of all this, but it did at least prepare me for all the horrible dermatology and sexual dysfunction pictures that I have to look at as part of my job today (scientific publishing, in case you're wondering).

My next school favoured the 'embarrass them out of ever wanting to have sex' method - teachers bringing in contraceptives from home to pass round in class. Including a half-empty tube of KY jelly - talk about TOO MUCH INFORMATION.

We had proper sex education in the 4th year during biology, this also included putting condoms on over boiling tubes.

Boiling tubes - like test tubes but bigger.

We were promised a lesson putting condoms on carrots in case we ever felt the urge to shag vegetables but this never happened. Bah. The boys' school over the road had a legendary vid / slide show thing showing penises mutilated by assorted STDs, for a week or so following the showing of this they were notably absent from our school gates at lunchtime.

Sex.

Anyway, I learnt about "mating", gestation, birth, breast-feeding and weaning by watching the farm animals.

My mum and dad referred to intercourse between humans as "mating" too - so until I was about 10 I also referred to it as mating. My parents were also into nudism so I was aware of human anatomy.

I learnt all about masturbation, intercourse, STD (they used to be called VDs), contraception, the clitoris, rape, incest, sexual harrassment, the G-spot, inter-sex/transvestite/trans-sexual people, prostitution, sexual fetishes, sexual dysfunctions and 1000 sexual positions and techniques from reading Dolly, Cosmopolitan and Cleo.

Some people like to slag off those magazines but I've noticed that it is usually the people who are not familiar with them that slag them off. I think they are exremely informative and do a really good job of keeping their audience informed about sex-related issues.

I do wish they were a bit more inclusive of lesbianity/homosexuality and I oppose their advocation of tampon use, but other than that I think they are pretty good.

In secondary school we did a massive class on it when I was about 16 or so, the teacher teaching it had recently married another teacher in the school who was pregnant shortly before their announcement, so obviously when he got onto teaching contraception he just got the piss taken out of him by everyone.

In secondary school we didn't have any formal sex ed, I think they showed us a video with a very tired, slightly high woman in a dressing gown pointing at different kinds of contraception, but that was part of the biology syllabus rather than for our own benefit.

We did eventually get a contraception talk when we were 15 or 16 and basically the teacher handed out example condoms for us to look at and information cards about various different kinds of contraception, told us to talk about them in small groups, and then sat silently and embarrassedly behind the desk while the more confident half of the class regaled us with their personal preference and anecdotes their bloke had told us about his past exploits while us nerds remained silent and hoped nobody noticed that we were doing so. Er, actually, maybe that was just me. Oh well.

"Jenny, Billy, could you demonstrate how to use this condom for the class?" hee hee hee

Age 6: Suzy decides to do light reading of Mayo Clinic Medical Book, opens to pregnancy and childbirth section. Hey presto. Elects self head nurse at 'clinic' behind bushes convened by neighbourhood kids.

Age 10: fifth-grade girls receive a book to take home to parents called 'How Shall I Tell My Daughter?' We are fourth-graders with friends in the year above and we've got the thing opened and caned by the time we walk home.

Age 11: we get our own copies of How Shall I Tell My Daughter and girls and boys are divided up a few weeks later for the chat. For weeks we go 'round calling the school's biggest meathead Vas Deferens. No freebies though I did remember asking where the sanpro was if film sponsored by P&G.

High school: fat football coach health teacher, Mr Weirauch. Knew all the shit so zoned out, wrote chapter of crap novel.

College: thank you Gay Men's Health Crisis for the phrase, 'if in doubt, double-bag your man'. Always wondered if they meant cock or face for that one...

Answers
I missed that particular class. Luckily my parents had been proactive in that regard.
-- electric sound of jim

I'm sure you don't mean what I think you mean.

one of the seventh grade english teachers at my junior high was allegedly (allegedly!) diddling a student.

The basic import of the lectures was "the man inserts his penis into the woman's vagina and all hell breaks loose from there on until a baby is born. BTW, this thingy is the Vas Deferens. OK, bye."

there was some stuff in high school. i remember being in english class in yr7 and the teacher putting on a video of a woman giving birth. she, the teacher, left the room as it started so, of course, some guy grabbed the remote control and fast forwarded to the end so we could watch it in reverse. all the girls left the room but me. who could miss that? strangely, if someone even mentions birth to me these days its really hard for me not to cover my ears, scream, run out of the room and throw up. that shit is just nasty.

this was after the Feeling Yes/Feeling No lessons in grade 1 and 4, warning everyone about molestation. there was a song:

"my body's nobody's body but mine!
you have your own body; let me have mine!"

the clever kids changed it quickly to:
"my body's nobody's body but mine!
gimme fifty bucks and i might change my mind!"

During my sophomore year in Catholic school, a nun came and lectured us about the various birth control methods. As I remember she was fairly straightforward, but a little inclined to dwell on failure rates and nasty side-effects.

Also, in high school we had a woman come in to talk to us about sex-- she had been given AIDS by her fiance, who had been having unprotected sex with countless men in secret. She basically implied that we can never really trust anyone 100% without condoms, even in monogamous relationships, if we absolutely want to protect ourselves from STDs. It stuck with me.

[PS I am not a wasp]

Parents who are against the new curriculum can opt out of some of the lessons on HIV prevention, but only if they commit to teaching those lessons to their children themselves. However, the Department of Education says parents cannot opt out of lessons on the nature of the disease and how it's transmitted.

hmm. this part is interesting.

maybe the kids will get quizzed on it. who knows.

um how are these threads getting bumped without anyone posting?

http://images.encyclopediadramatica.com/images/4/4c/Itisamystery.gif

I was shown a bunch of footage of 1. aborted fetuses and 2. babies with extreme defects from extreme fetal alcohol syndrome. And that's it. I didn't not want to have sex, I just never wanted to be pregnant or have a child EVER. (and l8r I got an lol gogortion anyway, harhar.)

they were not allowed to talk about birth control or aids at all.

I got this "congressional sex education round up" via email, thought i would share

Congress adjourned for the year on December 18th. While a lot of activity was crunched into the final month of the 114th Congress’ First Session, congressional activity throughout 2015 had significant impacts on the future of sexuality education across the country.

FY 2016 Final Funding
On the final day of the session, the Senate, following an earlier morning vote and passage in the House of Representatives, passed the Consolidated Appropriations Act of 2016. The final fiscal year (FY) 2016 Omnibus bill includes level funding for the Office of Adolescent Health’s (OAH) Teen Pregnancy Prevention Program (TPPP) and an increase for the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention’s (CDC) Division of Adolescent and School Health (DASH), but also a doubling of abstinence-only-until-marriage (AOUM) funding through September 30, 2016. Read more details on the funding for these programs. SIECUS’ statement is also available here.

New Elementary and Secondary Education Law
On December 10, 2015, President Obama signed the Every Student Succeeds Act, the overhaul to the “No Child Left Behind” education law. The new public law (No. 114-95) includes many changes beyond those related to sexuality education, but also resulted in major victories and future opportunities to advance school-based sexuality education. In addition to health instruction being explicitly specified as part of a “well-rounded education,” the new law enables local school districts to use federal funding for teacher-training and instruction on relationship-building skills. The bill was not without compromise, however, and existing language intended to put sexuality education supporters on the defensive was reiterated in a new section of the law. Read more about the Every Student Succeeds Act implications for sexuality education.

PREP & Title V AOUM Programs Extended
As an authorized (mandatory) program, the Administration for Children and Families’ (ACF) Personal Responsibility Education Program (PREP) is dependent on a separate legislative process than the annual budget and funding process. In April, 2015, Congress extended both PREP and the Title V AOUM state grant program, also administered by ACF, for two years through FY 2017. These program extensions came at the cost of the first-ever increase, $25 million–a 50% increase, for the Title V AOUM state-grant program. Read more details on the program extensions.

Comprehensive Sexuality Education Legislation
While the PREP, TPPP, and DASH programs are vital federal investments in adolescent health promotion efforts and can support comprehensive sexuality education, they are not and do not solely support comprehensive sexuality education. We are therefore grateful that champions in Congress continue to advance HR 1706, Real Education for Healthy Youth Act (REHYA), legislation that would support comprehensive sexuality education. REHYA was introduced by Congresswoman Lee (D-CA-13) in March 2015 and currently has 51 cosponsors. Read more about REHYA and its supporters.

The congressional wrap-up above doesn't take into consideration other actions throughout the year within the Administration or any of the numerous state and community activities that took place across the country. With this snapshot alone, however, it is clear there are many opportunities and challenges ahead in 2016. SIECUS looks forward to working with you, our nation’s educators, advocates, parents, and young people, to continue to advance sexuality education and support the sexual health and well-being of people throughout their lives.