Wednesday, 20 July 2011
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Sex Education, Remembered as That Awkward Moment When Your Teacher Slipped a Condom on a Banana
After reading some comments on my "Experiencing Secondhand Sex" post that said that information about sex came from sex ed classes, I realized I never got that kind of information from sex ed until I was in high school. Being that I moved around a lot when I was younger and went to a few different schools, I always noticed that sex education classes were taught differently at each school.Between my Catholic and public schooling, I learned of two different perspectives in sex education:
1) 5th-8th grade: Don't have sex. If you do, you sin against your body, you'll make God angry, possibly go to hell if you don't confess, and then have a baby you can't support.
2) 9th-12th grade: If you're going to have sex, be safe about it. In fact, let's show you how. Here's a banana...During my ten-year era as a Catholic school girl (this doesn't hold true for every Catholic school), we danced around the topic of sex all the time. We didn't read books that mentioned sex, except for that time we glanced over Song of Solomon in the Bible. Sex was referred to as "the way to make babies within marriage" and nothing else.
In 5th grade, we started a lovely program called Family Life, although I like to remember it as the Abstinence for All campaign. Boys and girls were initially separated. I'm not sure what the boys went over, but for us, it was the class that taught girls about pads and tampons, complete with an underwear and plastic dummy to serve as a model. The Family Life program also prided itself on sticking in a God-issue wherever it could.
When we were brought together, we learned about the parts of the reproductive system, took quizzes on the male/female anatomy, and watched cheesy videos from the 1970s on the development of a baby from fetus to birth. Great, informative, right? It was all good, except for neglecting to tell us about the way a sperm cell and an egg cell need to meet--via intercourse.
Sexual intercourse! What a dirty thing for us children to even ask about.
Fast forward to 6th grade, Family Life Round Two. We were beginning to feel our hormones affect our thoughts and bodies--boys watched porn for the first time and girls started reading Cosmopolitan, both just curious about each other's bodies. So after all this reading and watching and not understanding it yet, we asked. That's what kids do when they don't understand something.
"So, how's a baby actually made? How does the sperm cell get to the egg cell and why is it only in a woman?"
"When a man and a woman are within the confines of marriage and decide they are in love and financially ready to support a baby, they have sexual intercourse. It's when a man inserts his penis into a woman's vagina, thus impregnating her."
I mean, I guess that's one way to parse it down for middle schoolers. We were then lectured for an entire period about the dangers of having sex outside of marriage.
The list included:
1) You will get pregnant (because it's an absolute thing every time...)
2) Your families will be disappointed
3) You're breaking the Seventh Commandment, "Thou Shalt Not Commit Adultery" (you're "cheating" on your future spouse)
4) You will get STIs, UTIs, and STDs
And therefore, "you should wait until marriage. Stay pure and revere your body."
Fast foward to freshman year of high school and consequently my first year of public school ever.
Health class could actually be referred to as "Sex Education" and I suddenly was in the virgin-minority in my class. My teacher asked for honest experiences, to which so many of my classmates had answers and I barely had any. She didn't criticize anyone for their experiences nor did she ask about anyone's religious beliefs.
For the first time, I was exposed to the issues of abortion, solutions for victims of sexual assault, options for a single parent, and the different methods of birth control, complete with demonstrations on various pieces of fruit.
Talk about culture shock.
I personally am a fan of sex education classes. They informed me about sexual assault and rape, made me more cognizant of my body's natural urgings, and gave me free condoms. My public high school's sex education classes were much more helpful to me because it let me see how many choices a person can make, and helped me figure out what would be best for me in a given situation.If anyone is a fan of National Public Radio or The Onion, here are articles that might interest you:
NPR: The Debate Over Sex Education in America
The Onion: Ask a Gym Teacher Who Got Stuck Teaching Sex EdDid you have a mandatory sex education class in school? Did it lean more towards abstinence advocacy or more towards informing students about "safer" sex practices? Should sex education ever lean a certain way? Should it be taught at all?
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- From: dangelb
- About Me: My name means "daybreak" and I'm usually awake to watch the sunrise every morning. I'm a college student, obsessive tea drinker, and contemporary dancer. My first love was the piano before I learned how to love people. I love my R.O.B.--Really Outstanding Boyfriend--who gets just as excited as I do over antique books, soft-baked cookies, and Sporcle.
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Comments (22)
OMG. They messed me up.
Have sex, dammit. You are not going to die.
You will be in the same socioeconomic group you would have been in anyway.
God loves babies because they work for him.
@Colorsofthenight@xanga - No worries there, totally didn't stay true to my Family Life advice hahaha.
@dangelb - yes, life goes its ways.
Random,
I do hate babies though. I think ignorance is bliss there. If a family didn't have a billion babies, their older siblings wouldn't know the work entailed. Now I don't have any empathy for people because I won't do something. I've almost recovered from this round of attacks. I wonder what's next, hopefully no more waka waka.
Sex education should educate people on both abstinence and safe sex. Everyone is different and will choose differently, by laying it all out on the table you are giving teens the tools to make a well rounded decision. If they want to be abstinent, that's great, if they want to have sex, that's great too as long as they are protecting themselves. We can't just force abstinence on them, nor should we make them feel like they need to have sex. All we can do is provide the education so they can make their own decisions about sex.
This post cracked me up. Especially that picture of the... actors... on stage.
I had sex education in 9th grade, 10th grade, and 12th. I skipped it in eleventh because I didn't have gym, and it was taught as a mandatory branch of gym class (I took gym in 12th as an elective).
We were taught about safe sex, and my teachers were very reasonable and knowledgeable. They didn't preach abstinence, nor did they shove their personal beliefs on us. Considering the high school I attended, I got lucky. I can't say if it should lean a certain way... I'm fuzzy on that... I do not believe that telling young people NOT to have sex is effective, because if and when they decide to do it anyway, they'll be clueless and left unprotected. So I guess I figure it's best to raise your children with the knowledge that sex can be a beautiful thing, but you must keep a good head on your shoulders when it comes to having it. Schools should definitely teach it because many parents don't, out of shyness or embarrassment or because they believe in abstinence only or whateverrrrrrr.
I've never taken a sex ed course. In grade 7 there was just a guest speaker every week talking about periods. I'm trying to get into a "sex ed" kinda course right now in university and the seats are filling up.
We have a mandatory health class in high school but sex ed started in 5th grade for us.
Elementary school it was very scientific. We just learned the basics and all the shabang about the x and y cells. Middle school was the bulk of it. We re-learned the basics but we went further into it. And they didn't separate the sexes. We learned everything, saw everything, watched crazy videos. Every student also got to write in anonymous questions which the teachers answered. High school focused more on the diseases and different contraceptives.omg, my little sister (who's only 10 years old) had a 50 year old nurse that stood NAKED infront of her class and introduced them to her different anatomical parts.
@cHiCoLaTe@xanga - WHAT?! That's WEIRD. And RIDICULOUS. Aren't diagrams enough?!?!?
@ohforrealson@xanga - Definitely agreed. I think it's important to at least tell kids there are options, rather than have them do something, not know its consequences, and then not knowing where to go from there.
@o0_Innocent_0o@xanga - That's really great that your university actually offers something like that. Do you know what the topics and such are?
@dangelb - The criteria isn't up yet ): But the class is just called Sexuality and Sexual Behaviours. There's actually a list of some courses that I have to take and that was the only one I could fit into my schedule. There's about 57ish seats left and watching the availability of seats decrease is depressing T___T;
I must of been the only one that didn't have sex education in school.
I guess it helps to have a mother that was quite open about that stuff and it was easy to ask her questions about that.
THE POOR BANANA.
Wow good post. I always wondered what religious schools taught. The way I was taught, there is nothing worse than denying yourself, so be safe if you do it. Very liberal. You know what?
Worst. Advice. Ever.
There needs to be a mix, and more focus on the emotional aspect of sex rather than the technical parts. Frankly, when I did it, I could not handle the emotions attached to it. And I do not mean "love" I mean infatuation, fear, lust, self-loathing, embarrassment, loneliness etc that comes from having sex at a young age and thinking its nothing. Abstinence is terrible. So is the liberal, it doesn't matter, because actually it does, big time, especially to teenagers.
In my book, my kids are allowed to do whatever the hell they want until Eighteen apart from full on vaginal intercourse. That, I will explain, should be saved for someone you have known for a while, who you trust, and who you feel you can be friends with regardless of the way it turns out.
Really, they used a banana? Our sex education pretty much just said exactly how everything works, plus a video of a birth. I don't remember what they said about safe sex practices or abstinence, if anything, but I know they didn't do demos. This was before abstinence only became the norm.
I think a parent has a right to decide how they want their kids to learn about sex. A parent can refuse to give consent if they want, and I think that's the right thing, to have that option. My kids will be learning from me. They won't be in a public school anyway, and I have more faith in my ability to describe those things in a calm and clear way than a teacher.
@o0_Innocent_0o@xanga - You'll get it! Anyway, my university always has issues with classes closing, but the first two weeks of school everyone drops and adds classes like crazy. It's fun to stalk the registration system. Good luck!
@Hinase@xanga - No, you definitely aren't the only one who didn't have it. Glad you did have your mom though! Did you wish you had a class like it? My mom worked in a hospital specifically with kids and teenagers for years, so her idea of sex was always that it would lead to pregnancy... pretty tainted, so I got abstinence only talks until I was 13.
@Footballblogs@xanga - Suffocated banana is suffocated. :( yeah, being too liberal can be tough because it is a big deal, especially when your hormones are seriously out of wack and you may be making decisions based on your bodily impulses when your mindset isn't ready yet. My mom also used to tell me that sex would ruin my life, but she never specified how. I've come to think she means that it's too emotionally scarring if you're not ready and ruins your life in that way. Just puts a mental cockblock on you for a while. I hope those feelings have passed from you though! Before I ever experienced anything sexual for myself, I didn't know a single one of my friends who was "okay" afterwards. I felt absolutely great afterwards, but I also did wait longer than they did and had a more positive attitude towards the entire act. I guess it depends on where your mindset is at the time, but yes, I agree, they should talk more about the emotional implications. It's something danced around everywhere.
@WaitingToShrug@xanga - Banana did indeed meet condom. It was really weird for me though, but I guess they were trying to be extra meticulous in informing us because there was a string of unexpected teen pregnancies in the district that year. My school did have the option of a parent writing a letter to the principal for their child to opt out of sex ed, except they didn't detail what the curriculum was like, just said it was an "overview of sexual anatomy, sex history, and its implications" and most parents didn't question it further. It would be a good idea to have a consent form--after all, if you need consent to watch an R-rated movie or go on a field trip, why not get consent for an entire class that may also be questionable?
This post made me laugh. I've never had the chance to experience an abstinence based sex-ed class. I don't really remember the ones from high school, but I do remember the one from junior-high complete with a video of a birth and a male teacher telling a bunch of female 7th graders about how older boys will try to take advantage of us, and use us etc. It was a great class. I always thought it was kind of funny that the only girls that got pregnant in high-school from my junior high class were the two girls whose parents would not let them take the class.
I got my sex-ed from reading my mom's romance novels!
(Particularly Skye O'Malley, which was pretty hilarious, because it gave you a bunch of bogus like 'he slid his sword into my sheath' but still, I read this book when I was, um... eight haha)
I don't think I ever took an actual sex-ed class in school.. I must have somehow missed out on that.. what a shame.
Haha. My first sex ed class was in middle school, then we kinda went over the same material in Health class freshman year of high school. The first time I actually saw a condom face to face was about two months ago when my friends were cleaning out their rooms for summer vacation. She decided to "set a example" on how to put a condom on for us. Then my other friend blew it up into a condom balloon lol. She was so surprised I was still a virgin... xD.
I did have sex education in school but it was more about reproduction, periods, stuff like that.
My parents told me how to make babies when I was not even 10. Plus I saw stuff in movies (movies in France show a lot more than in the US); but I was still pretty ignorant until I started high school.
@Erika_Steele@xanga - Oh, the irony! Do you think those girls would have not gotten pregnant if their parents let them take sex ed?
@Cosmar@xanga - Lululul I like that sword analogy! Romance novels are an interesting way to learn about that stuff young. Did you wish you took a class on sex ed?
@usagiidesu@xanga - Condom water balloons are the best ;)
@Glouns - What would they show in France that they weren't show in the US? I'm always curious to know about what other countries do with things like sexuality.
@dangelb - Well, the ratings are not as strict as in the US. Parents are less "scared" about what the kids will see in the movies. I remember watching The House of Flying Daggers with my american host family: the parents didn't let the kids see the one kiss in the movie. And it was really just a peck, not like they were making out.
I mean, in France, kisses, love scenes and such are not hidden to kids. Now it doesn't mean that we get our education only through films. My parents were always watching the movies with us and explaining scenes that we didn't get.
I just think (and it's my personal opinion here) that not showing these scenes to kids is not a good decision because they will learn about sex and love from other sources, and there's nothing more natural than kissing the person you love.
I had sex ed and I never had the banana lesson. I WISH I DID. but anyway.....
I made posters about AIDs... and gonorrhea... and that's pretty much it. even though we got into the knitty gritty sometimes, we didn't really talk about the "what ifs." oral herpes can be spread by KISSING. this is a huge wake up call to a college student like myself (hahhhah). in HS I thought that I'd never enter the "super rage sexual scene" but college... college changes everyone.
@Glouns - The amount of censorship with those things is pretty high in America, and it makes it seem like sex and related things are taboo until a certain age. Even then, there's still judgment, as with anything. I had parents who didn't let me watch any of those scenes, and I wish I had been exposed to them earlier just because it was a total shock when I finally did see those movies. It made me feel "dirty" to say the least, but yeah, you're right. Kissing is natural, and so does everything that comes after. Thanks for the insight!
@cindrelle@xanga - I couldn't agree with you more on the college changes everyone thing. Be safe but have fun of course :)