I went to a catholic high school and the sex ed class was one of the biggest jokes of my entire learning career.
Our Science teacher, Mrs. Somethingoranother, was showing us slides of pencil drawings of what the female “vag-ne-a” (how she pronounced it)looked like. It wasn’t anything that us girls hadn’t seen from the instructions off a box of tampax. It lasted about a minute. Then the slide showing a flaccid male penis ( pen-us, she pronounced it) and then an erect one. She was so mortified and embarrassed that she shut off the projector and THAT was it.she wasn’t old at all, about 30. All of us kids just went, WTF? This was 1982. So I am a living example of learning everything I needed to know about sex from the movies, books and magazines.
We did get to see a really bad B movie from probably the 50’s about how two nice boys hooked up with bad girls at a party on the other side of the tracks and the boys got (cue scary music) VD and had to tell their parents and OH WHAT A SHAME. This spectacular piece of crap would have been hysterical for MST3K.
My neighbor has a 6th grade son ( very intelligent, articulate boy) and they have a sex education class that if the parents elect not to have their child attend, the kid has to sit in the library doing a paper that is NOT RELATED to sex education. It sounded to me ( and these parents) like they were punishing the kids who’s parents did not want them receiving sex ed ( more than half in the school for their age group alotted to pull the kids out of sex ed after attending a meeting on just what would be covered. One of the things was building a vagina replica out of godknowswhat. I think it was the vagina that got most of the parents to yank their kids from the program.)
I want to know what other dopers went through and those that have kids, what is your school system doing?
Hey, I am very proud of my vagina scupltures… sometimes I use beef, other times salmon.
Long separated by cruel fate, the star-crossed lovers raced across the grassy field toward each other like two freight trains, one having left Cleveland at 6:36 p.m. traveling at 55 mph, the other from Topeka at 4:19 p.m. at a speed of 35 mph.
In 1966 (gosh I’m old!) we had an embarrassed female (a substitute, not a Biology teacher) mumble thru some slides.
No mention of gays or any positions etc, etc - completely hopeless.
7 years later the ENTIRE university turned out to see a sex education film. (So none of had been told anything much). It was sensible and mentioned e.g. masturbation without saying it was sinful (or would make you go blind).
Nowadays our 12 year olds get a three week course run by the Biology Department. (All teachers are alerted in case we get asked questions.) It is pretty effective in giving them knowledge in a calm way, and disposing of myths. I know, because I’ve had quiet chats with shy boys, and heard dirty jokes analysed with a withering ‘Oh, we understand that, Sir!’
There’s an accompanying booklet called ‘Body Matters’, co-authored by previous students, which discusses in a cheerful way everything from contraception to anorexia neurosa to hormones to drugs to spots.
Why do parents want to pull their children out of such classes?
(I suppose I should say that we’re a Christian School, with daily worship and teach ‘family values’, but we have tolerance of other religions and lifestyles as well).
In the bathtub of history, the truth is harder to hold than the soap… (Pratchett)
My public school sex ed teacher was cool. The class was gender segregated, so he only taught guys. He added to the class discussion such gems as “When I get out of the shower I wrap a towel around my waist, make sure I’m about half hard so the towel bulges just enough, then make sure to walk by my wife on my way to get dressed.” Such good information as that cannot be found in textbooks!
Once you were out of the children’s section and sent to the adult section of the public library, you got the best education.
National Geographic was very graphic. I don’t think that at age twelve they would check out the adult books to us, but they were on the shelf to read at the reading tables.
We had the EXACT same sex ed class every year from fifth grade through eighth. By the last year, we could pretty much recite all the films by heart. (Nothing good. The one that really sticks out in my mind was called “Growing Up on Broadway” – and consisted of the orphans from the original cast of “Annie” telling about their first periods, etc. Why they thought we would be able to relate to this, I can’t imagine.)
There was a question and answer period at the end of each class, but it was a joke. The teacher would pass around slips of paper, and we would have to write down a question, or else write “I have no questions.” (So that the rest of the class wouldn’t know who asked questions and who didn’t … I guess …) Anyway, the teacher would collect all the slips and stand in front of the classroom unfolding them one by one: “Sorry, I’m not allowed to answer this one … can’t answer this either … nope, can’t answer that … yes, you CAN take a shower when you have your period … can’t answer this one either …”
I remember asking only one question in four years: “Is it true that it hurts to have sex for the first time?” Needless to say, it was not answered (even though an honest answer would probably go a long way toward keeping us virgins …) Sigh.
We did eventually get a much better sex ed class when I was in the ninth grade, but for some reason the new program has never stuck in my mind half as much…
Wow, our public ( and private) school system sex ed courses are truly inspiring. Any young Dopers out there who are in the trenches, so to speak, and having sex ed classes in school?
“Course”? --nah. How about our sex education 30 minutes, which, if I recall that far back was a 20-yr WWII clap film aired in one gym class (this for the boys; I have no idea what they did for girls). This, of course, at a school where the Dean of Girls would scold girls in her office who wore black and red because it would “get the boys excited,” and also had that 50s and 60s thing about patent leather shoes.
We had a video on menstruation in fifth grade. After that, all sex ed was pretty much biology class, and it was more on fertilization and embryotic development. Sex itself wasn’t really discussed.
We did have a Q&A session in seventh grade biology class–like Fretful Porpentine’s, with anonymous questions. But the subject was more post-fertilization and all, so we didn’t really have any questions on sex itself, again.
I do remember seeing the development of an embryo video about a zillion times–the same video, every time. I slept through it the last time…
We got a Bio lecture on sex in JRHS. Stupid teachers [& they do this today] give each kid a paper that has to be signed by their folks only if the kid CANNOT see the lecture. haha, guess how many kids didn’t bring the paper to the folks?
My sex-ed experience came by way of my Biology class. Nothing really remarkable about it, since we all pretty well had a handle on it by the time it was presented in class (I was 15, I believe). Best part about: the teacher drew everything on the chalkboard, and the penis she drew was HUGE. She was sooo embarrassed…
As an interesting side-note, the teacher often wore very revealing clothes. Her name was Mrs. Ficke (pronounced FICK-ee). We called her Mrs. Quickie.
In fifth grade, a bunch of the G&T (Gifted & Talented) students were given an opportunity to attend a special “electronics” class, where we learned how to wire up light bulbs and batteries.
While we were off in this ‘special’ class, the teacher taught the other students sex education.
I think this explains a lot.
JMCJ
Die, Prentiss, Die! You will never have a more glorious opportunity!
In the 4th grade we started the “your body changes” discussions in school. Girls in one room. Boys in another. We got to see the body changes of body genders. (yee haa! ::eye roll:
Fortunately for me I was able to participate in those discussions. Mother didn’t talk about those things. Heck, I’m 30 now and I still haven’t told my mother I got my period.
Senior year in high school (1987) we were required to take a semester of Health. I can’t remember a thing from the class except for the teacher refusing to demonstrate the use of a condom on a banana. Harumph!
A few years ago I worked for the science library in the same school district I went to. Now they start teaching “Self-Responsibility” at kindergarten. It’s all age-appropriate stuff…you know–Your body is your own, good touches-bad touches, then it progresses each year. Who knows if they still have that program but I bought lots of books at each grade level so I know they included topics like masturbation.
Okay after reading what I wrote I want to clarify I bought all the books for the program. Not for myself. Not that I’d be ashamed of buying books for myself…well, oh hell. Nevermind.
They didn’t teach the boys sex ed in my HS when I was going there in the late 60s. I think the girls got some sort of instruction as part of gym, but I never really heard anything about it.
I do remember my parents giving me a book on the subject when I was in my early teens. I looked at it once and thought, “I know all this,” though I have no idea where I learned it.
In college, I took a course on sex and sexuality and in my senior year, one on pornography. By then it was too late.
“East is east and west is west and if you take cranberries and stew them like applesauce they taste much more like prunes than rhubarb does.” – Marx
The only thing I remember about my 8th grade sex ed class worth mentioning here is how every guy in the room cracked up when the teacher (female) drew an erection on the chalkboard.
Because it was perfectly horizontal.
“I’m just too much for human existence – I should be animated.”
–Wayne Knight
As soon as Christmas break is over, I’ll be taking the one-semester Human Sexuality class.
At high school.
Sacred Heart Cathedral high school.
Should be interesting. I’ll keep ya posted.
(I can see a link on Opal’s site- What jjtm learned in Human Sex class today.)
JMcC, San Francisco, JJM’s page from the Bay
If I were a baseball player, and I got beaned by a fastball, I wouldn’t want medical attention. I’d want my limp, lifeless body flung to 1st, cause, dammit, I earned it!
