Early '70s’s, in a Catholic High School.
Taught by a PRIEST! :eek:
Scarred me for life
You mean it isn’t??? :eek:
Fifth grade, public school, upper middle class suburb in Northern California. I don’t really remember the specifics of what we were taught. I found it pretty boring, I’d had “Where Do Babies Come From?” books ever since I could read, and my mom was always very open and honest about sex and I knew about puberty from YA novels.
When I was a sophomore in high school, my school instituted a semester long Health class for incoming sophomores, but it wasn’t retroactively required, so I never took it. My sister, who’s six years younger than me but went to the same school, got my parents to sign the waiver for the class, so she never took it either. She didn’t object on any moral reasons, she just thought her time could be better spent taking Art.
5th Grade - Suburban Chicago - 1979 - Segrated by boy - girl
6th Grade - Suburban LA - 1980 - Whole Class
Late 60’s, small town in Midwestern USA.
In the midst of our 11th grade Social Studies class, there was suddenly a day when the teacher showed us this 1950’s era movie “Are your ready to go steady”. (The answer they wanted you to give was obviously ‘no’.)
We had a good time laughing at the clothes worn in the film, the music played at the events, and the generally lame dialogue.
Afterwards, the teacher had to lead us in a discussion about this film. As was his habit, he picked a couple of students sitting in front to ask, and personalized the question: “Susan, do you think you should go steady with Bill?”
We all watched, facinated, because the teacher had obviously forgotten what we all knew: Susan had gotten pregnant the previous year, married her boyfriend Dave, and later lost the baby. And Dave was sitting a few rows back in the classroom!
Susan’s answer: “I don’t know; I’d have to ask my husband. Dave, is it OK if I go steady with Bill?”
After the laughter died down and the teacher got the class back into order, he said “It wasn’t my idea to show this to 11th graders. They tell me what I have to try to teach to you. And they sure don’t pay me enough to do it!”
It really was pretty silly to try that with 11th graders. It looked like something appropriate for 4-5 years earlier.
Fifth grade (1965) boys in one room, girls in another. Basic body changing stuff.
Seventh grade, boys PE class. Similar to 5th grade, but went into the “bodies become one” thing. Without ever mentioning intercourse in any way.
High School Biology class. Reproduction Science. Boys and girls together. We would always joke, if we didn’t know how that sprem actually got to the egg we’d never know by what they told us in class. Again the word intercourse was not used. Just say it Mr. Smith, the man places his …
College 70s – Biology of sex ed. We were looking for a fuck film fest, and got way too much science and psycholgy.
All in the suburban SF Bay Area.
Nothing in school.
My father approached me one day and asked, in an embarrassed kind of way, if I had “any questions” I wanted to ask him. About what, he did not say; so, rather baffled, I told him no. It wasn’t until years later that I realised what the whole scene had been about.
My sister attempted to teach me the facts of life once, too. But she was talking such obvious nonsense (women laying eggs?!) that I didn’t believe her.
I went to Catholic school. Nuff said?
No, really, in fourth grade we got a ridiculously biological explanation, which was about it until I switched schools, to another catholic school. More biology taught in religion. Same deal in eighth grade, but this was included with how all the controceptives were evil. Followed by a stupid movie, which they made us watch again in biology. Granted, we were also taugh creationalism that year. Tenth grade, nothing. 11th, Fr. Morris trying not to roll his eyes too much as he explained the benefits of the rhythm method. I dropped out before I got to sit through another year of biology in religion and religion in biology.
It saddens me to this day that I’m a girl and yet most of my male friends have a better understanding of how controception and such works.
Oh, and for my parents, as useless at this as in all endevors of that sort, gave me a book geared for maybe 8 year olds when I was 12. I’ve talked to my mother about anything relating to sex at exactly one other moment in my life, when I told her I started my period. Love that open relationship.
Did I forget to mention that I’m now 19. Sounds more like I was raised in about 1960. Oh well.
I have to say based on this informal poll of dopers, that the WSJ is full of shit. But it seems that the concept of separating the boys and girls for the first year (it seems usually 5th grade) and keeping them together for the 2nd year is fairly normal. That’s what I went through, at least.
Sex education began in Hawaii in the early sixties. It began in the fourth grade and continued until the seventh. It wasn’t til the sixth that they actually showed you *dirty * pictures. It was in the seventh, with permission, that you could see the sex ed video[real nude bodies, artistically shot]. Of course, homosexuality was mentioned less than masturbation -Barely a paragraph. Ages nine to 12, circa 1965-1968.
If I remember right, it was the 4th grade, late '80s. Long Island, very white, very Jewish town. The boys and girls were separated into 2 rooms and we were shown I think an animated video and passed around a kit that had pads, tampons, etc in it. Maybe a condom in there as well?
5th grade, suburban public school, mid-50s. It was the only time a special teacher came in to teach us something, rather than our regular teacher. It was basic sperm-and-egg stuff. I was the kid who asked how the sperm actually got from the man’s body to the woman’s. I don’t think my question got answered.
7th grade: the whole puberty thing.
High school “hygiene” class went into much more detail, including STDs and “Reefer Madness.” I remember seeing a film of a C-section birth of triplets, during which the class jock passed out.
5th grade for us. This would be during the 1993/1994 school year in suburbia in Las Vegas, Nevada. Boys and girls were seperated. Afterwards, we girls got free samples of pads and deodorant.
During my sophmore year of high school (1998/1999) in Kansas City, Missouri, we had to take Health and Family Wellness. In Health we learned about STDs, etc. and in Family Wellness we leanred about various methods of birth control.
6th grade, 1967, special meeting for girls only about menstruation (not exactly sex ed). The boys were all looking up “menstruation” in the dictionary and trying to figure out what it meant.
8th grade, the one official sex ed meeting – with very abstract diagrams showing where the penis and testes are, etc. I think they were trying to explain how sex worked, but it all went over my head. (Yes, I was that ignorant.)
The first class I remember was in 6th grade. I recall that we went over the exact same material in our confirmation class, with more depth about a month after the unit was taught. More detail, and even more detail was to follow in health classes through the 10th or 11th grade. Mid-sized midwestern city known for health care in the mid-eighties.