In one of my classes, the topic of sex education came up. Okay, well, more like how we were first FORMALLY introduced to se-xed. Apparently, in one of my classmates' school, in 9th grade, boys and girls were separated and the teacher didn't even say SEX, she used "the S-word." WHAT?!
I found this preposterous, and one of those things that are so weird that they couldn't possibly be true, but apparently ARE.
See, maybe it's different in public schools. I went to a public school in suburbia. It was in the 4th grade when teh boys and girls were sequestered and cordoned off to learn about "the birds and bees." We (the girls, obviously) watched a video, we asked questions ("Are you still a virgin if you use tampons?" "Yes."), and we were all uncomfortable whenever our health teacher said sex, penis, or vagina.
(On a sidenote, I find it particularly interesting how when the boys learned about masturbation and what not, they got the "cool" teacher and got to stay upstairs and convene in his classroom meanwhile we were herded into the lower floor-basement level science lab. Maybe there were just a lot more girls?)
The girl in my class apparently had to learn sex-ed every year. Ugh, how horrible. I took health/sex-ed in 7th grade because it was mandatory, and again in 12th grade (mandatory and because I waited for the last possible minute). We had the standard STD pictures, practice safe sex speeches, etc. Boys and girls in the same room, and it wasn't really a big deal. I thought this is how all sex-ed programs were like (well, except for the ones that are pro-abstinence).
How about you? How did you learn about sex in school?
Recommend
Comments (36)
I liked sex-ed, it was fun. My teacher was always lighthearted about everything. She had us put on the drunk glasses and put a condom on a banana, and other crap that i can't remember. I remember alot of people being uncomfortable, but i felt like it was fun to learn about everything.
Except in in grade 5 they made us watch a video of a baby being born. Like, full frontal.
It was probs the scariest thing I ever saw at that age.
@mustardcat@xanga - that would probably freak me out if I saw that now.....
Don't remember too much about grade school when they would separate the boys and girls and talk about what each needed to know about the changes in their own bodies and such and the introduction to sex-ed which was in my school 3rd or 4th grade and then every year after through 6th grade.
When we got to junior high it was cover during the health course of PE. And the 10th grade, we had the full sex-ed. Everyone in one class room. We learned about STD prevention and birth control, but is was a program based in abstinence, we were just taught the rest so we knew how WHEN we had sex cause my school wasn't stupid and knew we were going to do it anyway, at least some.
We watch a video of a vaginal birth, meant to scare us into not getting pregnant and having to go through that. Had to go around the room and say penis and vagina, individually, and if anyone laughed we had to start over. We met a woman who looked like she could be anyone and learned she had HIV, and took something like 30 pills a day for it. We had a nurse take condom and put it on her arm and pull it up to her elbow, and tell us that there was no excuse to NOT use one, and to not let the boys tell us girls that they were too big for a condom because if he was THAT big we didn't want him anyway. The nurse was HUGE, she was at least 350lbs, so you can imagine the size of her forearm. lol.
interesting how this blog pops up on my feed cause Im in health right now as a requirement for my gen ed studies and the teacher asked us all how we learned about sex....and we all answered either through our health class or friends...
this needs to change. now. I mean the education in public schools has def. helped somewhat but there are still some people out there...in their 20's... who dont trully know about sex. Like, it made me laugh, but its also really scary as well...this guys thought if him and his partner orgasmed at different times then she couldnt get pregnant...like really???
I first learned about sex in a school setting in 5th grade. girls boys seperated. which doesnt make any sense to me what so ever...its the one act that requires both sexes participation, yet we are educated about it seperately.
and then again in 7th grade??....and then after that everything else i learned about sex was either me investigating through the internet or my sexually active friends.
my mother never sat me down and had "the talk" which I can guess not many others had as well...
sex is not a dirty word. It needs to be said and talked about openly or there is never going to be any progress or change
I was homeschooled and learned about sex from my mom. My mom was of the belief that if a child asks where a baby comes from, they need to know so she told me about it when I was around five and then into greater detail when I was much older.
This is one of the BIGGEST reasons I will homeschool my kids. It is not a teacher's responsibility to teach sex to their students!!
I remember in elementary school the boys were taken to another classroom as well, and the girls went to another one, the boys used to brag how they were going to get condoms. But if you think about it that's kind of an early age to be giving those out, so we all knew they were lying...took health in 7th grade again...and again in 9th grade..in 9th grade all I remember was watching a video with Sinbad dressed as a latex condom 0_o
but yeah we just learned the general stuff like practice safe sex and the only safe sex is no sex..etc
I remember in middle school, every girl was excited to take sex ed. They assigned baby dolls to the "pretend couples" and we were allowed to take the babies home for the weekend and care for it. In the back of the doll, there was a chip implanted to make sure you were doing what you were supposed to be doing as far as feeding the baby or tending to the babys needs. It was very interesting to say the least. When I reached high school, the majority of the girls were already pregnant so I guess they figured we already knew what sex was. My parents never talked much about sex either. We were a disciplined Asian family and talking about that kind of "nonsense" was not necessary. Mainly because they believed if you didn't talk about it, it wouldn't happen. Sadly, I learned about sex when I was 10 while watching a movie that involved a couple of love scenes.
@mustardcat@xanga - damn, i saw that video a few MONTHS ago and even in my 20s its still frikin creepy.
Lol my sex ed was the exact same as yours, except we did it in classrooms.
I first asked my dad what sex was probably when I was in second grade, because I kept hearing that President Clinton had "sex" on the news. He told me it was when people touched other people.
Grade 3 this one kid I knew told me that the boy puts his "hot dog" in the girl's "bun" to have sex, and make babies. Then it all made sense to me.
Grade 4 I saw porn.
Grade 5, we got separated. I got to stay with my teacher. We had a question box. We saw pictures, we talked, and she told us how babies were made, and that we would be growing hair in different places. It wasn't too bad.
In grade 9 phys. ed and health we learned about STDs and birth control. We had to put a condom on something and it was really awkward but funny. We had to do silly skits too. It was educational at the same time.
I like how my school didn't just say "Don't have sex until you want kids". We learned about different methods of birth control other than just condoms and abstinence.
In elementary school, I didn't even have sex-ed because parents were allowed to make sure their kids weren't present in class during such talks. Middle school just talked about abstinence. High school was a little better, but it was usually just a class or two that wouldn't expand upon the topic much. It talked about birth control, STDs and pregnancy, but it was so brief, it was pointless. I guess it's lucky I'm asexual because with the quality of my sex-ed classes, I would be lost as a sexual person. Sex-ed in America needs a major overhaul. Kids need to know about their bodies. Stigmatizing sex just makes everything worse.
In grade 4/5 we got separated and learned about our own bodies (females learned about females, males learned about males) and that was it. In 8th grade and 9th grade health we had sex in the curriculum, but by then we already knew what was going on so it was no big deal. Most of my talk came from my mom, which I think this is how it should be-- from the parents.
5th grade they separated us and told us about the changes we would be going through soon with a TINIEST bit of what the other gender would go through (apparently the boys learned more about us vs us learning about them). Then in 7th or maybe 8th grade they touched base with us again....telling us about STD's and safe sex (condoms and birth control), but it was very short. The most we got was in high school; 10th grade (i believe) were we watched videos of different penis' and all, STD pictures, learned each others parts (inside and out), pregnancy etc. They also had ONE class on abstinence, which was taught by an "outside" program.
I really think that schools should do both sex ed and abstinence....but i also think that they need to touch base on the emotional part of sex and all. I mean the abstinence tried to bang it into our heads about "how you will regret it.." and all, but that doesn't do anything other than get eyes to roll. Parents should be involved but sadly some aren't and maybe school should have it that they can (not made) to talk to someone about sex/emotions without having the schools flip out and call parents right away...i mean really what happened to student (patient)/doctor (teacher/counselor) confidentiality? Ok well anyway...those are my thoughts :)
My sex ed classes were always very informative and fun. (Yes, fun.) Teachers weren't boring, and were very direct when we asked questions.
i learned in 5th grade and i was soooo mortified by all the images and things they were telling us. it didnt help that all the immature boys were in the room cracking jokes about vaginas n' what not.. lolll. but thank god i transferred to a public school by then because if i was still at my old catholic school i would have learned the birds and the bees from a bunch of nuns.. i think thatt.. might have been worse. LOL
summer school health class right before high school was about to start
I saw a cauliflower type of std picture and it was uber gross.
No. not at all.. We were sort of forced into signing abstinence pledges. lol. I didn't.
Formal introduction was during my freshman year of high school. It was part of gym class.
my sex ed was pretty comprehensive. whenever i hear people say that sex ed should be taught in school i used to get so confused, because it was pretty normal for comprehensive sex education.
If you don't get sex ed until high school then it's probably already too late for you.
Wow...
I'm 39.
When I was 4 years old, my Mom picked up a staple-bound, 70-something - paged pamphlet/book, titled, "Know Your Body", and read it to my older sister and me, cover-to-cover, then placed it in the coffee table, where it remained until I turned sixteen. She made sure to reference the complete Encyclopedia Brittanica, the Webster's dictionary, and other reference books in the living room, "...in case there are any questions or confusions that you have. If you have any questions after that, you can talk to me at any point in time". Yeah.
The book, and the topic, rather remained, for the most part, even through two moves, in the same left drawer in the leather-topped coffee table, there in front of the sofa. Yeah....
In the fourth grade, in a Catholic school I attended, they had the, "Birth, Growth, Development" series, with boys and girls sequestered in separate classrooms. Yes, in a Catholic school.
In junior high [or middle school, as they call it in some districts], in a public school, they made no bones about it. "Sex Ed. Pass this letter to your parents, get 'em signed.", followed by, "...if there are questions you want to know, but are terrified to ask, you can submit them anonymously here [a locked box near the door of each classroom that had Sex Ed teaching mini-course].
In high school, it was "Life Management Series" - CPR & First Aid, Home Ec, Cooking, Sewing, Sex Ed - in random order - taught in two classrooms, back-to-back. When the quarter for Sex Ed came around, the boys were in one of the classrooms, the girls in another, and the teaching materials and lessons mirrored each other - in some cases, word-for-word.
Funny anecdote: one girl, during the presentation, "Contraceptives, Risk, and Statistics", while demonstration models were being passed around in class, quite suddenly blurted out, during class, "Oh CRAP!", opened her purse, opened her pill compact, inspected the contents, glanced at the calendar on the wall, then promptly popped one out and dry-swallowed her pill.
That lightened the mood quite a bit that day...
this is wonderful topic ... i will put acopy of this topic
on my sites here
as7ap
as7ap
as7ap
as7ap
as7ap
as7ap
dir
dig
vb
vb
soft
Since it's getting towards the end of the school year for me [I'm in year 12]. In Religion class [I go to a catholic collegein Melbourne, Australia] a few days ago, our teacher handed everyone a booklet about what's your plans for next year.
She told us to turn to one of the pages and ask us how much of us knew what sex was, if we were sexually active and whether we ever regretted our first times :s
Well a few of us really never had any sex ed classes, she thought it would be helpful if she would explain to us the menstration period of girls... so she told us about the times in the cycle a girl is most likely to become pregnant.
For my personal experience. I do not recall any sex edu. until grade nine when we were in our health and physical education classes, learning about; drugs, alcohol, smoking, std, herpes and aids then sex ed. at first most of us were still sort of immature.
If anyone laughed at the words penis, virgina etc. She would call them by their scientific name and get usto draw whatever we laughed up, on to the board. So there was a lot of penis'. The closest to sex ed. in school for me was in grade 5 when we were more on the topic of hygiene - so the need to control our BO.
I guess I learnt all the need to know things from peers, television, books and slowly research.
Hm... In gr4 we learned what a period was, what a vag was, and what a penis was.
That is all the sex ed i've ever had. I've gone to catholic schools for elementary and highschool. I learned basically nothing.
In highschool they did have a seminar on sex ed for a course that was not mandatory, therefore not everyone heard the guest speaker. But the guest speaker insisted that there was no other way to avoid STDs apart from abstenance. She said birth control, condoms, or contraceptives just didn't work. She said JUST DONT HAVE SEX UNTIL YOU'RE MARRIED. (My friends told me this after they went.)
I personally researched and informed myself on sex and I found this appalling. This doesn't help teens not have sex, it just makes them think "well if nothing works anyways, let's just not use protection".
Needless to say in grade 10 I already knew 4 girls that dropped out or transfered because they were pregnant, and I knew 2 who had abortions.
Let's see...In 4th grade, my dad explained sex to me on the way to school. The fact that I'd often peeked at his Playboys also helped in understanding the conversation.
6th or 7th grade, I think we had some minor sex-ed. I do remember that they separated the boys from the girls, and I believe talked about the anatomy of both genders.
Sophomore year's health class went into the details of std's and "sefe" sex.
I'd like to ask another question onto this. How effective was sex-ed for you? How do you think it could (or should) be improved?