In this thread we’re discussing whether or not there have ever been people who entered marriage having no idea how human reproduction worked or how their genitalia was intended to function. Turns out it’s true.
There is, of course, always going to be schoolyard talk and parents who try valiantly to shield their kids from the realities of their own sexuality. But of course, most public schools in this country offer something approaching comprehensive sex ed, even though it’s obviously going to be incomplete, flawed, or (insert adjective here) in certain districts (abstinence only! Jesus wants you to wait until you’re married! Say no to Teh Gay!).
As a data point, I offer two competing narratives from fiction. In the movie My Girl, which takes place in 1972, the pubescent heroine freaks out that she’s “hemorrhaging” one morning, and an older female friend has to explain it to her. Would Pennsylvania schools in 1972 not have taught about menstruation? Conversely, the book Are You There God? It’s Me, Margaret (1970, New York) the protagonaist explains in rather uncomfortable detail about the (admittedly-flawed and incomplete) way she and her peers learned about menstruation at school.
From nonfiction, there were the Walt Disney-produced films about menstruation from 1946, about which I’ll leave to a gynecologist to dissect. My own personal experience was that of a boy in Central Illinois who got into “that age” around 1980-1981. I don’t remember much about sex-ed, but I can say confidently that it didn’t leave much out.
We had sex ed (called “human reproduction”) in 6th Grade. I had the impression it was a relatively new thing at our school and everyone seemed to think it was cutting edge. This would have been late 60s. It wasn’t “comprehensive,” certainly compared to what my kids got in school 30 years later. We did, however, learn about menstruation. Lots of stuff on ferritization of eggs by sperm, STDs, and maybe even nocturnal emissions. As for the rest, I still had questions. I still do.
I was in grade school during the 1950’s to very early 60’s, and in high school during the 1960’s. I never got any sex ed in school. I got some very basic info from a book my parents gave me when I was about 9 or 10, and then a good bit more when I finally got my hands on Joy of Sex and Our Bodies, Ourselves – by which time I was 19 or 20.
It’s possible that, if I’d stayed in the same school system, I would have had sex ed in school; I don’t know. In sixth grade I was the only child in the school who started menstruating, and the grade school clearly had no idea what to do with me – I refused to go to school because the bathroom stalls had no doors on them, and all the school could come up with was to say that I could use the teachers’ bathroom; but everybody would have wanted to know why I was doing that, so I just stayed home the last few months of grade school whenever I was bleeding. But I don’t know whether that school system had sex ed in 7th grade, which would have been early enough at the time to get most girls before they started – usual age of menarche is earlier now than it was. In seventh grade I moved to a private school in a different state, which started in seventh grade and it’s possible that they assumed we’d all had sex ed in sixth – but considering the school, it’s also possible that they just assumed this wasn’t something that was done in school, only at home.
Are you me? I still have questions too. Too many questions it seems.
IIRC in comfy whitebread suburban SoCal in 1969 they had a girls-only one-time one-hour class in 6th grade where all the girls were told something [Cue eerie music]. Under the age vs. grade rules in effect there then, these girls would have ranged in age from just barely 11 to just barely 12.
Us boys were left to wonder and speculate wildly. Info about their impending onset of menstruation and “stay away from all boys; they’re all creeps” were two common guesses.
This girls-only class did not seem to be a new innovation in 1969. I have no idea how many years before that it had been done, but this wasn’t a pilot program; it was something established.
Actual sex-ed as a 1- or 2-week unit for boys & girls within a health / science / biology class came later. IIRC 8th grade, so age 13-14. Which was 100% focused on the mechanics of impregnation, its avoidance, and the scourge of STDs. No mention that it might be fun to try, nor that the experience improves with practice.
I do remember a lot of snickering and nervous laughter, plus a few very awkward or embarrassed questions from the audience. I’d say “student body”, but that joke already got over-used in that class.
Yeah, we did the boys-only, girls-only thing when I was in 4th grade. A guy on the schoolyard told me they were learning about their periods. I didn’t know what he meant.
I can’t answer for public schools, as I went to a Catholic parochial school. But, during my time there, in the 1970s, we absolutely had sex education.
The school used a book series (likely written from a Catholic POV) called “Becoming a Person.” It was a unit we had, probably during either religion or social studies class, every year; during the unit we covered in fifth grade (which would have been 1975 or 1976), we got the birds-and-bees lesson, which also included menstruation, etc.
It was a co-ed school, but during those particular sections, the teacher taught the girls and the boys separately.
I should also note that, as per the OP, I’m not sure exactly how “comprehensive” that fifth-grade instruction was. It certainly covered the basics, but didn’t tell us a whole lot about birth control (it being a Catholic school, after all).
As a freshman in high school (again, a Catholic school), during our social studies class, the teacher actually taught an entire section on sex ed, including quite a bit on contraception. I suspect that he was telling us about that because he knew it was important, even if it wasn’t part of the approved curriculum.
I mean, most things have happened at least once, I suppose–but we don’t have a single occurrence of this having happened that’s verified by multiple sources, or even, I think, by a first-hand account. Closest we got is a second-hand account of a gynecologist in her memoirs.
Early 70s Southern California. We all had Basic Health classes in elementary school that weren’t too specific. High school changed that. Not only was Biology required to graduate, but there were specific units in PhysEd that dealt with the subject. The subject wasn’t co-ed yet, so I have just hearsay as to the lessons the girls got. I do know that the athletes got totally different instruction than the rest of the boys. The people who did the presentations for us got into the down and dirty and answered every question directly and simply. When they asked for questions, one of the clowns in the group asked a direct question (IIRC about finger-banging a girl) thinking it would throw the instructors off. Nope. After that we all felt better about asking questions without embarrassment. Very educational.
My elementary school started teaching Sex-Ed to 5th graders around 1966. I had to go home and relay to my older sister what I’d learned, as she never had the class.
We had a class called “Health” in elementary school starting 4th grade, and we covered the human body in pretty amazing detail, with units on The Skeletal System and The Endocrine System and all that, and yes we got to The Reproductive System in due time. Did not split the class into girls and boys separately. It was presented in decidedly NON-chatty, clinical, didactic presentation-of-facts fashion as if we’d be no more curious about it than The Nervous System. Testes, ovaries. Fallopian tubes, vas deferens. Penis, vagina. Menstruation, uterus, fertilization, implantation. Cervix, dilation, contractions, delivery. Pituitary gland, puberty, estrogen, testosterone, progesterone. XX and XY.
The act of sex was all “tab A goes into slot B and then semen comes out”. Absolutely no presentation or discussion of sexual appetite or pleasure, or dating and courting, or attraction.
In 7th grade, we had Biology all year long and got more details but still pretty much by the same formula except contraception was covered with methods and diagrams.
In 10th grade, there was Health & Sex Ed which covered coercion and consent, ego and disappointment, courting and dating, sexually transmitted diseases, and such.
The first thing to realize is that there’s no such thing as American schools. At least not insofar as a single organization that oversees the education of the entire country. As of 2023, there are more than 16,000 independent school disticts in the United States and this is just public schools not private. Most school districts are governed by their own board elected by residents and are subject to guidelines that vary from state to state. If you went to high school in Plano, Texas in 1993 then odds are good you got a very different educational experience from someone who went to school in Waxahatchie, Texas.
It’s not so much a matter of when American schools starting teaching comprehensive sex-education, it’s which school district started teaching it. I went to elementary school in Colorado Springs, and when I was in 5th grade in 1987, we had a two day comprehensive sex-education course. It covered the nuts and bolts of the human reproductive system, how the male body worked, how the female body worked, and even included information about HIV/AIDS. When I moved to Texas in 1988, nobody had taken a similar course, and I was never offered such a course through my graduation in 1994. I think we might have been given some information in our required Health course we all took, but I can’t remember.
Let me add in summary a fact that sums it up pretty good I think. We talked a lot about the “ovum” and no one once mentioned the “clitoris.” (If was, perhaps, in the diagrams, but never mentioned)
Our unit was two weeks. The boys and girls were separated for only one day. Our female teacher talked to the girls and a male pediatrician talked to the boys. (mostly about erections and ejaculations as I recall)
Going to elementary school in Southern California, I had sex ed in the fifth grade, which would have been the 1964-65 school year. Boys and girls separate, watched the movies, followed by a lecture and Q&A. I recall a lecture by a male teacher about condoms. He drew a huge penis on the black board, at least four feet long. He then added a condom, then an ejaculation represented by chalk curly lines coming fron the tip of the penis, demonstrating how it was contained by the condom. Memorable.
A teacher is starting a sex ed class, and asks if anyone would be willing to come to the blackboard and draw a penis. Everyone looks nervous and is quiet. Finally, a girl in the back raises her hand and says she’ll do it. She goes to the board and draws a very accurate and very erect penis.
The teacher says “that’s very good, but we’re just getting started here. Maybe you could draw one the other way?”
Right. Plenty of qualitative articles when I punch
history of sex ed
into Google*. But I’m not seeing much about prevalence overall or of specific topics (to get at whatever “comprehensive” is) over time. Doubtless we’ll continue to get a bunch of “here’s what I learned in my boomer youth” posts.
