I had a formal “growth and development” class in sixth grade which put forward these delicate topics in a polite and logical manner. It wasn’t until my high school “parenting” class that I had what could be termed as a “sex ed” class. The whole class was centered around a daycare that we set up called the “fun factory” in which local people were encouraged to leave their kids so we could experience firsthand what kids were like. It was horrible. A couple kids were dropped on the floor and I spent the whole time watching a friend build block towers. The only day we spent actually learning about sex ed topics was our last day of the class where our teacher handed out pamphlets detailing the mechanics of different contraceptives as described by previous students. Her last stunt for that class was putting a condom on her hand and sneaking up on us with it from behind.
She was also one of those teachers who had on the most serious face when she was talking about appropriate ages to introduce toys to a child, but had the most manic smile when talking about shaken baby syndrome.
Oh, and I can’t forget to mention that the next year three people in our school got pregnant, one of which was in that parenting cla
April 2012
I’m from england and I’m still not 100% when we’re supposed to start Sex Ed. I know I never got taught in Primary school even though my last years teacher had work sheets. I found out simply by reading a book in the library. My mum wasn’t angry about this, she was just happy I knew and wasn’t totally freaked out about it. In my High School, the entirety of the Sex Ed classed was 4 weeks of Tutor time (about 15 minutes) talking about STD’s and STI’s. They didn’t tell us anything about condoms or actual sex, they told us to search for it ourselves. I actually went to a night lesson at a FREE clinic for an hour and learnt more about condoms and sex there in an hour then I ever did at school. I’m still wary about what’s down there in case it’s not normal!
I got traditional Texas sex education. Essentially we were shown pictures of horrific STDs and they never actually covered how people become pregnant. We also were shown that strange side view of women’s anatomy that no one explained was from the side. So I had absolutely no idea what parts were supposed to look like.
So that year when I went on vacation to Hawaii, I spent the entire trip thinking that I could get pregnant by swimming in the ocean with boys. I also thought this could happen in swimming pools.
This didn’t clear up until I moved to Colorado, where sex education entailed passing around spermicidal foam, actually putting on condoms, and descriptions of what a clitoris is supposed to look like/function as. I only wish everyone could have that education as their ONLY experience.
I had no sex ed in high school that I remember, but I only got health for half a semester and that teacher really didn’t do any teaching at all. That was in Maryland. In my middle school in North Carolina, I got a half a semester a year for 3 years. 6th grade was “this is is the reproductive system, name all the parts.” 7th was the year they brought in the nurse from the free clinic to teach us and all she did was tell us horror stories about the grapefruit sized genital warts and horrible smells she had seen over the years. 8th grade actually covered pregnancy and birth control pretty well but did stress that abstinence is best. Lots of “I got knocked up when I just let him put the tip in” videos. Also every girl in every pregnancy video I saw was one that used to be rail thin and then got very heavy and stayed that way after the baby. I’ve always wondered if the underlying message was “you will get fat and ugly when you have babies.” And why do we teach sex ed in middle school more than high school anyway? It’s just weird at that age, high school is when you need that infomation most.
I had absolutely no practical sex education throughout my entire school career. We were shown a video in the fifth grade which was supposed to educate us on our changing bodies, and in high school we had a mandatory health class that was to educate us on our sexual health. It didn’t really do that. Our school subscribed to a program called “Safe Guard” that essentially involved showing pictures of various genitalia infected with various STIs. They then had us determine when risks for these types of conditions began. The answer? Right when you started open-mouth kissing.
So don’t do any of that. Obviously.
I’ve got two experiences. First was in fifth grade, two classes switched around so one teacher had all boys and the other had all girls and they showed a video. Now, for this day I was actually absent, so when I got back and people started teasing me about sex I was very confused (not because I didn’t know anything about it, I was very internet capable). After I got my friends to tell me, I was just angry. The guy had some weird name that you only encounter in sci-fi novels while the girl was name Jenny. I explained my being insulted to the teachers and got out of the whole sex ed week, including the test, receiving an automatic pass.
The second sex ed attempt by a teacher was centered on aids. This was in high school, so I assume they gave up on abstinence. When we entered the class room we each had a clear plastic cup of water on the desk and a small straw. He said that he put a drop of chemical into one cup which would change color when he put a different chemical at the end of the exercise. He then instructed us to pull a little of our cup out and exchange it with someone else, and to do this with the number of partners you expected to have. By the end, he went around putting a drop of the opposing chemical into each of our cups. Only two managed to escape the blue cup. He said that even though someone may look completely normal it was still possible for them to have AIDS, and even likely that they had no idea. He didn’t claim that we must be abstinent, simply that we should be careful.
In sixth grade, we had a fundamentalist teacher who taught bible stories in history class and eventually left public school teaching to go to seminary & become a minister. In sex ed, we had an open question period. One boy, sweet and meek and often-teased and likely gay, had the courage to raise his hand and ask if boys could have anal sex with other boys. She locked eyes with the kid and said, somberly, “Anal sex is very painful. No one would ever, ever do that to someone they loved.” Poor kid started crying, and the class laughed and mocked. Worst moment of that whole awful year.
I went to public school in a liberal, big-city school district, so no one tried to convince us to abstain, but my 8th grade sex ed unit was still a joke. My Biology teacher spent most of the time giving us her personal advice on such important topics as “men use love to get sex and women use sex to get love,” and she spent so long telling us about the ~hilarious~ time a parent walked in just as she was writing “HOMOSEXUALITY AND YOU” on the board that we never actually got to that unit. If she had even taken five minutes out to tell us what and where the clitoris or the hymen was, this homo would feel a lot more charitable toward her.
On the topic of abortion. during one sex ed class when we got to the subject of abortion some of the kids started going of about how it is evil and a sin. One girl asked about the case of rape and one said it was the girls fault for tempting the man and she should keep it. I had to be held back by my mom from hitting him.
I, unfortunately, was forced to go to a baptist christian school for the duration of my high school career so obviously the sex ed classes were only focused around abstinence and the evils of abortion. I do remember over hearing a conversation between two guys asking each other if they were “clean”. I assumed it was about drugs, I had never heard that term being used for anything else. Later I found out that the leaders of the guys bible study had organized a lecture for all the boys in our school, arguing that masturbation was an impure act and was killing potential future babies. They were now on a accountability system where any of them could ask any guy if they were “clean” (masturbation free).
To this day I am still somewhat terrified of sex. The sex ed I was taught was - for the most part - a long-ass list of things that would go horribly horribly wrong if ever a penis was unclothed near me. I also live with an intensely Catholic grandmother and a very liberal mother…so mixed messages are the norm when it comes to “shenanigans”. The first time I was ever naked with a man, I had an intense panic attack due to a drop of pre-ejaculate fluid landing an inch from my vagina. I had been on regular birth control at least a year before that, and I still was treated to cinematic mental flashes of failure and misery. Even after that scare had passed, and we had legitimate sex (with my pills AND a condom) there was always a period of intense nervousness until my period showed up.
It has gotten to the point that any kind of real physicality beyond kissing makes me practically nauseous with anxiety. My own mother has asked if I need some kind of help getting over this fear.
I recall one guest speaker (former football player) who visited my high school told a drawn out story about a night he had which started with a party or somesuch, having sex with a woman he had just met, going for a drive and getting stuck on train tracks. I think drinking may have been involved too, but it was a surprisingly small note in this tale on sex ed. Anyhoo, his vehicle was smashed by a train with him inside, but clearly he recovered.
So basically, what I took away from his speech was ‘If you have sex you’ll be hit by a train.’
My most memorable sex ed class was when I was in 6th form about 16-18 and our teacher asked in any of the boys would like to volunteer to put a condom on a fake penis. So one of the boys got up all cocky like “yeah I know how to do this”, so he did it and sat back down and the teacher was like “Nice try but it’s inside out”.
Everyone laughed.
I don’t really have any bad sex ed experiences I guess because the UK is less close minded about such things.This happened in second year of high school. We had a biology work to do, and we did it on contraceptive methods. So when we got to condoms, we got a banana and asked a boy to show us how he would do it. He got mad at us for asking and didn’t do it. Then another one got up and said, filled with confidence, that he knew how to do it. Then he got the condom and started putting it on the banana. But forgot to hold the tip. By then no one was taking it seriously and we all laughed.
In fourth grade, all the girls were pulled out of class to have a lecture on periods. It was informative but basic in that the lecture focused on the purely scientific side of it. Then in eighth grade, they had a skit/play about STDs/HIVs, taking the “Have safe sex” route, even though they never exactly explained how sex worked. Despite this, almost everyone in my school knows the basics of it, mainly due to the Internet.
Middle school sex ed consisted of the science teacher, a 50-something woman we were all scared of, stretching a condom over a large sports water bottle because she had forgotten her banana. Even though I knew penises weren’t that big, I couldn’t help imagining something that size going inside me. Terrifying.
Our high school sex ed program was pretty comprehensive. It still stressed abstinence, but it took a “Well, if that doesn’t work, here’s how to do things safely” approach. My most vivid memory comes from one class period where my teacher stuck a cervical cap to her forehead and walked around teaching all class period looking like a unicorn
My elementary school was supposed to start teaching us sex-ed in grade 6. but each year after that, no teacher i had wanted to talk about it. we were separated by gender in grade 6, and once we continued in other grades, teachers didn’t want to speak to both genders in the same class. Other schools in my town were apparently more upfront about it. and once i reached high school, no schools in my town talked about it. but being a person that aspires to be a sexual education nurse in a few years, i hope i can change the regulations, and get more sex-ed classes in schools.
This submission isn’t actually about bringing porn to school but I would love love love some submissions on either bringing porn to school or bringing up the topic of pornography. Love you all! <3
My sex ed class in grade school, early 90s in NC, was awesome and highly informative at first. The teacher they chose had actually become pregnant earlier in the year which kind of showed us she knew a thing or two about the subject. She was unmarried but the pregnancy had been planned. She’d been with her boyfriend several years despite the flack they got for being an interracial couple. Then some douche nozzle parent complained that she was a bad influence on the program and didn’t teach the right values. The teacher ended up getting fired during the whole fiasco and I was never sure why. Also, she was Jewish and the replacement teacher literally pointed that out as one of the reasons she wasn’t right for the job. I flipped my shit and started yelling out sexually related insults/curses at the flabbergasted old cow. I made that class hell for the woman pointing out her lies every step of the way. I actually took the liberty of bringing in The Joy of Sex book my parents thought was so cleverly hidden in a hope chest. Needless to say I got kicked out for bringing porn in. My parents were called and they both agreed I was a little bad ass that deserved some motherfucking ice cream.
Can I just say that I went to public grade school and had a fantastic and comprehensive sex education program that spanned several years, and was progressive and informative? I really wish I remembered the name of the instructor, she went to all the local schools and had a different “lesson plan” for each grade. (It capped off with horrific photos of people mutilated by rampant STDs, but that was during the same year we were all seeing the horror movies in Driver’s Ed, so I figured that must be a theme for the 10th grade in general.) I was never confused about sex or reproduction.
Hooray for the Clinton era.
