I did in junior high. Still remember the teacher’s name, Mrs Weintraub. And I’ll NEVER forget her teaching us that a McDonalds cheeseburger is healthy because it covers the 4 food groups… yes the 4 food groups were still the accepted standard of healthy eating back then in the early/mid 80’s. Laughable in retrospect.
I remember a health class in elementary school. It didn’t go anywhere near sex ed, but was so basic that it talked about things like the importance of keeping yourself clean.
On the other hand, I knew kids my age that washed up maybe once a week and smelled, so maybe it was necessary to be that basic.
I didn’t attend public school but that was actually irrelevant. There were state mandated health education requirements all through the K-12 years that were typically taught as Health class. The last was a semester long class I had in high school. IIRC it knocked out all the high school requirements in one shot during 9th grade.
He may have done this because he knew he would have difficulty formulating an age-appropriate reply.
The human biology part was 7th grade science, “Health class” was a requirement in 10th grade along with PE.
ETA: Forgot to mention this was 1970s.
We had health in high school. Being Mormonstan, contraceptives and STD weren’t mentioned.
We had a “sex ed” class in sixth grade. Boys and girls were separated and they talked about menstruation with the girls but not the boys. I think the girls started in 5th grade.
The human anatomy was never clearly shown, even in high school.
We got human anatomy, at least as far as the reproductive systems went. I’m pretty sure the slides shown were photographed out of Gray’s Anatomy. (The book, not the TV show.)
We got Health in middle and high school, though the emphasis was on the reproductive system, and not much else. There were posters on the walls of the classroom telling you that “Smoking Kills” and “Drugs Are Bad,” but the class always came back to sex-ed somehow, and photos of pages in Gray’s Anatomy.
Catholic school 1959-1971 (You can’t scare me; I was taught by NUNS!) No health class, no sex ed, no human anatomy in biology class. Essentially, our sex ex consisted of “Impure thoughts and touching yourself are sins and must be confessed before receiving Holy Communion”
Human health and biology were covered under “Science” in my elementary school in 5th or 6th grade('67-'68), but no reproductive or sexual issues were talked about. It was also covered under science or biology classes in junior high.
I didn’t have anything called Health Class until high school('72-'75), and that was basically Sex Ed. One Health credit was required for graduation, and I, like most people put it off until 12th grade because it was an easy A, required no real work, and we could concentrate on other things. My class was taught by the football coach who went into graphic and often humorous detail about myriad ways to catch and to avoid VD.
In the years when I had “Health”, we didn’t even have gym, so it definitely wasn’t gym teachers doing it. Like robardin, we had one teacher and we stayed in one classroom (the one belonging to that teacher) all day long; but the report card listed “health” as a subject and one received a letter grade for it by itself, and “Health homework” was assigned from the “Health” textbook, etc.
Unlike junior high and high school, where English was in 2nd period between 9:15 and 10:10 or whatever, the transition from one subject/course to another was accomplished by Ms. Norwood saying “Take out your Geography books…”
We had a shitload of subjects in 4th and 5th grade, come to think of it. A lot more than in high school, that’s for sure. English, Reading, and Spelling were three separate things; Geography, History, and Social Studies were three separate things too. Science, Math, Health, oh yeah there was a separate GEORGIA History class in addition to the regular (US and world) History… oh, and Music, and Art. And homework in most of those, dammit.
The girls got the menstruation talk/film in 5th grade while the boys were shunted out to the athletic field for fresh air. But in Jr. High and High School we all had a Health class.
I did. Some years we would be taken out of Gym for a few months to have Health class and some years it was its own class separate from Gym.
We had one of those as well, and our mothers had to be there. There was one girl in my class who didn’t have a mom (parents were divorced and the father had custody, something which was almost unheard-of at the time, because of her drug addiction) and her dad’s girlfriend was there.
A couple years later, my Girl Scout troop went to the local chapter of the American Cancer Society and watched a film, designed for teenagers, about Pap smears and breast exams. Pretty much every woman I’ve told this to replied, “I was in the Girl Scouts and we never did anything like that” and I answered that what a Scout troop does is influenced by the leaders’ life experiences. Our leaders were a husband and wife who, before I met them, lost a child to cancer (leukemia) so this was a very personal issue to them.
Our health class was taught by the girls’ coach/7th grade PE teacher. I honestly don’t remember learning about menstruation in any class in school. I think we were supposed to get that information from our moms but we generally got it from other girls. I wasn’t told about it by my mom but I wasn’t surprised when I got it so I must have learned it somewhere.
And we had a Tennessee history class in seventh grade.
3 marking periods (didn’t call them semesters) and one of Health per year. I know Sex Ed was covered during the health class but I can’t remember anything else that was taught.
At least they covered the basics.
Had it in 10th grade, half of the school year; second half in my case.
Among other good to know first-aid and other emergency procedures, we learned mouth-to-mouth resuscitation and CPR on very complex mannequins ( which must have cost a bundle ) and other useful info. I’m glad I had the class, and learned many things that benefited me to know as life went on.
Another ancillary benefit was that it was in lieu of PE, which in my high school, was an absolute ulcer-inducing hell if you weren’t good at athletics and popular.
We had Health Science in seventh grade, which for me was the first year of junior high. This was where they taught us about illegal drugs and alcohol as well as sex ed, in addition to just other general health stuff.
Health class was a required class each year for 6-8th and 10th grades. We learned about reproduction and birth control/disease prevention, alcohol/cigarette/drug use, and fitness. Oh, and we too had a CPR unit in 10th grade.
I had that class in the 5th and 9th grade except the 5th-grade classes was about mental health nutrition and puberty and things like cleanliness done in a cutsey style "why you cant eat nothing but chocolate … taking a bath more than once a week is a good thing … my favorite was “why is suzy upset at me all the time” (explaining that time of the month to boys) and “why do i hurt and get grouchy everyr month” (for the girls)
the 9th-grade class was about the rest you stated and was pretty hard core