Back in my day,,, I went to catholic schools. One day in high school they shuffled us back to a dark room and showed us a film about reproduction. They also told us about the family planning method, and that abortion was wrong.
What was sex ed like in your school?
how should it be taught?
were you aware that most states disallow information on alternate lifestyles in sex ed, and that three states even go as far as to only include negative information on alternate lifestyles?
© 2026 – SoulSequel
19 responses to “Sex education”
I think education needs to be more comprehensive as to what’s out there without passing judgement. Having said that, responsibility needs to be stressed and the consequences of acting on impulse based on what one’s hormones says to do. If you’re cognizant of the risks of your behavior, then you should be able to do what you want with whom you want, as long as consent is there with all parties involved.
Let’s see… In Romania we started that around high school (we weren’t doin’ it at 11-14 anyway, we were preoccupied with other things). At 13 there was a person from Always that came to our school to explain how maxi pads work. I don’t know what the guys did. Yeah, it was advertising, but it was sex ed, and we learned about how both boys and girls work, and pregnancy, etc. Abortion was never brought up, nor contraceptives. Just periods, and how the body works.
In high school, we got into depth about contraceptives, but abortion was still just not brought up. Anyway, we learned how pregnancy happens, what it’s all about, in gritty boring detail (this was biology class, and sanitary ed.) (this was boys and girls in the same class, so boys had to learn aalll about the menstrual cycle too). We learned all about STD’s (again, sanitary ed.). We learned how to avoid STD’s by using condoms and limiting the number of partners (that’s where I first learned that some people do it with a lot of other people). We learned that pulling out is not as effective as condoms (sorry, is this too much detail?) and we also learned about family planning, and why some (implied married) couples use contraceptives (orals, foams, and others) to limit the number of children they have. And it was called “family planning”, I think, which made it kind of nice. Like, “oh, ok, this is what adults do and how and why.” Absolutely no stigma attached. But abortion was just not brought up I think. I don’t even think there are a lot of facilities in Romania to enable that so who knows.
How should sex ed be taught? When I was 5, my Mom had this… children’s book… laying around, called “how babies are born”. And though I was 5, I could understand fairly clearly that men make women pregnant somehow, and usually they do that when they are married. There were cute little comics with the parents excited about their kid coming soon and all that cheesy stuff that made it appealing to a little kid. So anyway I picked it up and read it on my own just because it was laying around. It worked :P
@georockstar09 this was very interesting to read! Thank you for sharing that!
theres been massive amounts of hoopla about the new sex education curriculum in ontario. what it came down to was if the curriculum goes against your religious choices of upbringing, then your children will be exempt from that half hour class.
i didnt get any sex education until i was released into the world and then i discovered it for myself. not a good recipe for a naive young woman!
in high school we did a class on how to put a condom on a banana and im sure we covered more than that but i dont remember any of it. in home ec we watched a video about aborting fetuses and it broke all our hearts. not very educational that.
there needs to be mediums. if safety and terms arent being discussed at home, hoping avoidance of the topics will do the trick, then i dont see why they arent discussed at school. it falls under Health in our curriculum now. there is a sheet that comes home ahead of time. i use this to have a private guided conversation with my son every year, and i answer questions in the mean time. some i feel uncomfortable answering but i field them as they come in the way i deem appropriate. i didnt expose him to all the truths young but i wanted it to come from me before the teacher so he would understand, and not feel so awkward that he missed something.
i could go on but i gotta go to work :D
@BelleMadre
Perhaps the only reason to “require” schools teach children about sex (or morals or ethics) . . . is if the parents are neglecting it in their childrens’ lives.
To not do it and then complain about how someone else might be doing it for you, is just silly.
@BelleMadre that is an interesting way to handle it, but I wonder of those that don’t attend need a lesson in cultural sensitivity?
@Scarlett it was a hot topic recently with the new curriculum. there were a Lot of protests from various religious sects. the solution was that if these classes offend or go against your personal religious or cultural ways, then opt out. not the first time this has happened. already happens in some senses. so it was an easy shift for them to have their children go to the library for half an hour, or to the hall to do some home work, while the rest of the class does the lesson. i mean there will still be exposure to terminology, unless they home school… but i think the parents roll is to have discourse at home either way. and i respect that.what does it mean to me if my muslum neighbours daughter is opted out of the physical/sex education health classes? nothing. sometimes i think its the people looking at the parents of children who dont attend, for religious/cultural reasons, who need a gentle conversation about respect and acceptance. you know?
if it were up to my son he would opt out too lol. talking about these things in privacy of home is awkward enough :D in a whole class! YIKES – according to him :D
I’m old enough I can still remember when we vilified the USSR for essentially giving their children to the state to be raised and educated. They were mocked for things that we nowadays call “daycare” (kids raised by strangers) and the “rampant de-personalization” of making students all dress the same.
My point in all of this, is that children should be raised by their parents. School’s lot is to prepare them to be cubicle-drones, willing and able cogs in the machine. School prepares them to WORK. It is a parent’s job to prepare them to LIVE.
Sex ed for me was about as clunky as it was for you. Parents who tried, and ended up just giving me books (with pictures!). A coach at school who bragged about keeping a dried-up condom in his wallet “just in case”. (But he was the type who was challenged by how they got the pea in the whistle and couldn’t understand why he was getting taller each day as more and more debris got lodged in his shoe cleats!).
Again, parents SHOULD be teaching sex ed, along with their chosen morals and beliefs as a starting point. We as a species have never had any trouble branching out from this starting point, into all kinds of “”alternatives”” — to benefit and detriment.
@griz these are some interesting thoughts. I think I might like it.
Mr Zuloff, in about grade ten phys Ed class, took us to a classroom instead of a gym. Diagrams were set up. Pubic hair was discussed and the rapporte between the class clown and the teacher got us through the obviously uncomfortable teacher’s chdelivery.
About a year later we went through basically the same thing, without the jokes, with the girls, as their gym teacher and ours tag teamed on the delivery. By then I was always careful to have text books handy for camouflage as required.
@spitfire3dc it sounds like there was a lot of talk about the onset of puberty at your school and not much else. I guess we can’t expect that our schools would have discussed something like alternate sexual education, being that globally gay marriage wasn’t a thing until the 1990’s, but I wonder about now.
The home I grew up in had 18 kids living in a small 2-bedroom and one-bathroom cracker box house. Not only that, but, the neighborhood teenagers hung out at our house. My brother was the originator of the neighborhood gang — The Dogpatchers. On any given day, there were about 20 neighborhood kids hanging out. Now imagine a small house with about 38 kids and 2 adults —- and one bathroom. By the time the school got around to teaching us about our menstrual periods and a bit of sex-ed, I already knew about it. I was a quiet kid that stayed to myself and lived in my own bubble at the fringes of the crowd of kids. I heard all the “girl talk” and saw the sex all around me.
@ladybarbara that sounds like it may have been a difficult situation to be exposed to at an early age, but it seems like you were able to use your mind to escape to some degree.
@Scarlett Yes, it was a weird household. Plus, I had a promiscuous “Mom” that went “dancing” on Saturdays and brought home a man (or two!!!!!) and on Sundays — when we were preparing to go to a drive-in church — us kids would be stepping over Mom and a naked man in the living room. He was like the Elephant in the room and we tried to ignore his morning hard-on — er— I mean trunk!!! But getting ready for church was easy, we just grabbed our hairbrush and clothes and piled into the car in our night gowns. The church was in a drive-in theater and Rev. Robert Schuller would say, “Come as you are, but stay in your car, please!” I remember going out the door as Mom said to her overnight man friend, “BE GONE when we come back!!!” and they would leave.
I learned to pull into myself and live a life “alone” in a bubble, ignoring the chaos of people I had to step over and around. It seemed that all the females had their periods at the same time and there was no privacy in that house. I would sit in my closet and watch the teenagers having sex, or making out.
On the day my period started, I locked myself in the bathroom. No one was allowed to lock themselves in the bathroom in a house of 18 kids and 2 adults. So, my locking myself in the bathroom attracted the attention of the crowd pounding on the door. “I’m bleeding!!!!” I cried. The response was, “Put a band-aid on it and get the hell out of there!!!” I came out and Mom announced to a room of about 30 people that “Oh, it’s nothing! Stinky-girl started her period.” There were cheers, but I was not cheering. Every girl in the room wanted to teach me how to hook up a Kotex to a belt. Mom said. “If you ever let a boy touch you, I will kill you.” What the hell??? Then there is the trauma of seeing blood coming from your own body. It is more terrifying than just hearing that some other female is bleeding. There was no privacy in my childhood. — So, I learned to create my own privacy inside my mind. I had a job at the local roller rink and I practically lived at the roller rink, school, the local malt shop, and at the local beaches. At home, I cooked meals and then ate my own meal at the kitchen sink, while washing dishes for everyone. I found ways to cut myself out of the crowd.
@ladybarbara that sounds traumatic, indeed.
@ladybarbara
The need for sex education may be a result of our overly prudish society.
Cultures we may fancy more primitive than ours practice far less secrecy and shock value when it comes to human sexuality, and children learned about it naturally over time.
One sees a similar process at work in naturists. The children grow up with the attitude “Why make such a big deal about it?”
Here ya go…
@immortal_pirate nahhh
Sex Education 101 with Melanie Griffith from the movie Milk Money