Sex education

To try and give youngsters a grounding in the Birds and Bees. Tried to show the responsibility that parent hood brings, but not in such a way as to put you off for life, just to dissuade from unprotected sex. Also teaches basics about STDs.
Normally a source of great amusment to teenagers accross the planet. Maybe if the didn't find it so funny we wouldn't have such a high teen-pregnancy rate. It could even help curb the population explosion the world has experienced over the last 100 years.

Perhaps you shouldn't wait until your kids are teenagers...
That way, they learn about sex from you first.

Ignorance is bliss if you're to stupid to handle the truth.

I actually had two seperate sessions of sex ed. One was in 8th grade, another was in 11th grade. I found both very entertaining.

In my 8th grade class I was in an all boys' school in Australia, where the teachers felt that we were old enough to talk explicitly about sex. There were no girls around, and tt was Australia after all. We were big blokes (see Australian lingo).

He started off talking about what the hell sex was and the different styles of "copulation". This was funny already. He proceeded to show us genuine porn. I'm not kidding. He showed us a couple of Penthouse videos.

To us young 14 year olds boys, with our hormones raging around, to see real pornography is like striking agold mine. We were amazed. That was the best class I have ever taken. Hey teacher how did they change positions without stopping, you know, doing it?

He also mentioned something about pregnancy, STD's, and protection. We weren't paying attention. Oh well. We got enough education that day in our opinions.

My 11th grade sex ed class did not have such an important impact on my life as the other one did. It was a lot more boring, filled with mumbo-jumbo about diseases and consequences.

Whatever. I'm a sensible person. I don't need a teacher to tell me what to do. Unfortunately, most other teenagers do need it, looking at the teen pregnancy rates in the USA. Oh well.

I went through sex education twice, once in elementary school, and once in 11th grade. The first one was courtesy of the Colorado public school system (where I would have had the dubious honor of going to Columbine high school, if I had stayed that long). It was very scientific and dry, and I got the impression that our teacher was very uncomfortable having to explain the birds and the bees to a buch of elementary-school students. Most of us had only a vague idea of what sex was and how the mechanics of the dirty deed worked, but had never given much serious consideration to doing it ourselves.

The second time was in 11th grade, perpetrated by the Texas public schools (apparently a subsidiary of the southern baptist church). The entire lesson was "DON'T HAVE SEX". Because if you do, it'll turn green and fall off. I learned more in elementary school.

I have two contributions to this node.

The first is a memory I have of health class in grade 7. We were learning about the human body. At one point, the teacher (also our gym teacher!) asked us to name different types of cells we'd heard of. Of course, some keeners raised their hands to mention "muscle cells", "nerve cells", "blood cells" etc. Then one guy said "penis cells". The gym teacher looked somewhat confused for a moment and then said "Uh, I guess those would be muscle cells". Of course everyone thought this was funny, but the man was obviously woefully underprepared (as became more obvious later). Fortunately, my parents had given me a couple of very progressive books on the subject, so I didn't have to rely on his expertise.

The second is a photo tacked to the wall in an office in my department. It is of two Kenyan (I think) Boy Scouts, maybe 13-15 years old. They are, according to the caption, carving wooden penises for use in rural sex education condom demos. Holy cow, I have never seen a) bigger grins on human beings, or b) bigger wooden penises, in my life! I mean, wow, these things were about a foot long! I guess they were having fun, and serving a worthy cause at the same time...

The mother of one of my friends used to be a social worker in Texas. She (the mother) once interviewed a woman with four children who was convinced women got pregnant by eating peanuts. She'd eaten peanuts four times, she had four kids. Logic, yes? The woman was not mentally ill. I hesitate to guess at her IQ, though she was evidently able to take care of her four kids (more or less).

Anyone who thinks that sex education in public schools is unnecessary or improper should shadow a social worker or a women's clinic nurse for a day. Ignorance ain't bliss.