gURLs sound off on sex ed at their schools

Writing this blog has taught me a lot about the situation inside America's "sex education" classrooms.

Some of my knowledge has come from closely following the news on this topic, but plenty has also come directly from comments that you have left after the posts.

I've really enjoyed reading them, so I thought I would share some highlights with you:

ArielMeog says, "I live in North Carolina ... I can tell you loads of bull crap I got from the abstinence-only ed. It's the whole "girls give sex to get love, boys give love to get sex." They basically promoted the stereotypes that girls were weak and gullible while boys were unable to control their urges.

In my ninth grade health textbook there was a load of information on drugs such as marijuana, crack cocaine, heroin, barbiturates, meth ... very comprehensive information. But when it came to sex it was 'SEX IS BAD, YOU ARE GUARANTEED AN STD AND PREGNANCY. PLUS, IT GOES AGAINST YOUR RELIGIOUS BELIEFS!' And I go to a public school."

Leah says, "At my school in Michigan, we get the whole abstinence-only education crap. Even our STD unit sucks. They basically tell us, 'If you have sex, you will get chlamydia and die, even if the person does not have chlamydia. If you wait until you get married, you will never ever get an STD ... even if your husband has one.'

In the entire program, (STD and standard sex ed) I never heard the words "condom" or "birth control"--except the first day, when we were told that we weren't allowed to say them. The sex ed unit was just about a bunch of pregnant girls talking about how much their life sucks."

Elizabeth says, "When I was in ninth grade, sex ed was taught by my health teacher. He was a football coach and did the 'sex is scary, giving birth is scary, and sex will make you diseased and gross' thing.

Miranda says, "In eighth grade (supposedly our "big sex ed year") it was kinda comprehensive, which was good, only our teacher was a big believer in abstinence until marriage and she kept talking about our virginity as a "gift to give to the right man" and other stuff like that.

Anna says, "We just recently had the annual 'AIDS Presentation.' It essentially told us this:

• We push abstinence-only, because you're irresponsible
• All drugs will kill you the first time
• We push abstinence-only
• People get high and get raped at all raves
• The techno music at raves will make you start worshipping Satan
• We PUSH abstinence only
• If your boy/girlfriend shows any signs of jealousy, s/he's abusing you
• WE PUSH ABSTINENCE-ONLY

I also learned that most of the, like, 200 7th graders at my school think that if a girl is the victim of domestic (dating) abuse, it's her fault. How sad is that? Really. It makes me sick."

Deanna says, "I'm in 9th grade, in Georgia. In 6th grade we began the 'real' sex-ed class and the teacher stated that abstinence was the only way to protect yourself from HIV/AIDS and she didn't mention that condoms would serve any purpose until I raised my hand!

Now, we are taught abstinence and a little bit about contraception. This year I was lucky enough to have a teacher who was straightforward and knew how to get through to kids. His stance was, 'Even if we don't want them to have sex, they're gonna do it, so they might as well learn how to be safe when doing it.' He was great. The only bad thing was he couldn't answer all the questions because of the laws."

Opheliasawake says, "My sex ed class was horrible. We went into great detail about STDs and AIDS, and then my teacher propagated several myths, including (but not limited to) condoms having a 30% failure rate and that AIDS arose from homosexual sex. I brought in an article from a scientific journal that demonstrated that the HIV virus came from a hunter getting contaminated monkey blood on his hands. She responded by making us watch a video from the Reagan era where a female AIDS victim who got it from a bad transfusion told us that abstinence was the only way to avoid HIV. She also refused to publicize the location of Planned Parenthood, where I used to volunteer. Not exactly 'You will get pregnant and die,' but close."

What's sex ed like at your school?

Comments

[CaseyParker]

In 9th grade I had a Physical Science teacher who broke the laws about sex ed by saying, "What happens in this room STAYS in this room. What we talk about is for YOUR knowledge because the bigwigs upstairs think that this is WRONG." He told us about everything, birth control, condoms, abstinence, and even gave us a resource to get free tests and condoms (about a block or two from our school). His philosophy was "I know you guys. You're going to do it. So be careful, dumbasses." He always swore and such to make us feel comfortable, because he knew that "people were going to have to deal with assholes eventually" and would demonstrate effectiveness of sexual means. Once, he demonstrated how long a condom was my stretching it over his arm and then saying, "It won't break unless it's dried out, like in a wallet, but you should test it this way either way. And no one is too big for a condom."

It sucks that you guys have idiot teachers.

[monkey!]

I'm a sophomore at a private Catholic high school in Kansas City, MO. Last year, me & my best friend wondered why we didn't have sex ed... I mean, not that we were all doing it or just wanted to talk about it, but a lot of people need to know these things. We pushed it with our nurse and she tried a few things... They didn't work. I think they should have a sex ed class because it might teach some of us things that we don't know and mistakes we could be making. Well, last year, my best friend also got pregnant. Not that sex ed would have taught her that sex would get her pregnant, but maybe it could have taught her and pushed her more to protect herself... I think once teenagers reach a certain age, they're mature enough to talk about these things & they need to start talking about these things freely so they can be as informed as possible.

[Annoymous]

First off, on my schedule it says, "Family Living," not sex ed, even though it obvious is sex ed. Anyway, my teacher was cool, she was funny and that made it a lot less awkward. Also, she's been our teacher since about 2nd grade, so by then we didn't care. It was 8th grade and since 5th grade there has been some sex ed units. In 8th grade, she went over abstinence, encouraged it as... the only 100% way to not get pregnant/get an STD. Then she continued to inform us thoroughly about condoms, the pill, etc. I already knew about all of it by 8th grade--but for those who didn't, I think the class was very informative. My health teacher even showed us her "Have safe lunch, use condiments!" shirt. That was a fun class. This year however (9th grade) it is not the case. I have a ton of homework, and everything is so incredibly vague. For people who go to my high school that didn't go to my middle school (which is about 20%) must be VERY confused from that class. I hate it, and my teacher is a jerk. He's one of those teachers who never lets you use the bathroom during there class, down to a point where some girl asked him a bunch of times, and then yelled at him that she had to change her tampon and just left. That's another thing, I notice that a lot of girls are totally uneducated about TSS syndrome... not a good thing.

[Jess]

I am in 8th grade and live in Michigan. Our sex ed started in 4th grade!!! We learned right away exactly what sex is.

[emily]

I am 17 and I think the last time I was in an actual sex-ed class was tenth or ninth grade. Recently, every senior got a talk on STDs and AIDs because we are going off to college. But in all my years of sex-ed education I noticed that they left one little group of people out; gays. Maybe it's because it's such a taboo subject but I really think that schools should also educate on safe sex in the gay community it really made me feel isolated in all my sex-ed classes because it was information that really didn't pertain to me.

[Pauls girll]

well i was suposed to get into sex ed class this year but the pricaple decided not to becouse one kis xaveir was yellin our eewww and yuck wen the teacher said penise or sperm or even vagina and everyone got tired of him and my freind chance threw him out thw window of the classroom and he got suspended and now we cant have anymore sexed classes at school and it sux becouse i was really lookin forword to learning about it but nope they had to do some stupid shit like that

[luna]

well i live in michigan and i am in 8th right now and the sex ed i had in school for the first half of fifth grade there was none but then i came to a different school district and we learned about puberty and that was about it no mention of sex in 6th grade i dont think we learned about sex it was puberty and such again so if kids in my district only know what they learned in health class then well there screwed

[Carmen]

I'm in 10th grade and I haven't taken a health class since 8th grade (I wanted the high school credit early).

I've been reading through these posts and it saddens me to see that (almost) everyone is saying the same thing: Health class pushes abstinence only and the teachers (by law?!) aren't allowed to answer the most important questions.

I honestly don't remember much of our sexual education portion of health class, but I'm fairly certain we at least covered the different STDs that you can get, how you can get them and ways to protect yourself. I do remember the, "The only sure way to protect yourself is to remain abstinent!" speech, but it was stressed that you can get an STD from ANYONE if you don't have them checked, and that if you're going to have sex, you should ALWAYS use a condom.

To be truthful, I believe that one of my normal teachers (science..?) in eighth grade went over it more fully than our health class did because she knew that she wasn't restricted to a curriculum for that discussion.

I really hope that teachers (or states, if this really is a legal issue) realize that by the time half of teenagers are 15, they've already had sex or are close to it. Sexual Education needs to be comprehensive and straightforward or the situation will never improve.

[Angela]

I'm in eighth grade in Florida and have no sex ed. I really want it, because I find sexuality and anything of that nature infinitely interesting. I had it last year and she thought she could trick us. She said, "I'm gonna level with you, condoms don't work and you will get an STD the first time most likely. Pregnancy sucks and anyone who says anything other than that is trying to rape you." She tried to trick us into thinking she was being real with us when she said "I'm gonna level with you", but she went on to state things that are completely untrue. That was better than what we got in my old catholic school, where we went into the mind numbing details and anyone who even hinted at having sex before you're married was taken out of the class and lectured at. I have never heard about masturbation in a classroom setting. My parents are catholic and still say that premarital is horrible and doesn't even feel all that great. Also, we never learned that it's okay to be GLBTQ. At this point in my life, if I got pregnant, my boyfriend and I would both be kicked out of our houses.

[Bridget]

yeah i got sex ed my freshman yr at my school. im 18 and im still learning about sex b/c schools do a pretty crappy job of explaining things. i found out almost everything about sex through my parenting class, not even the sex-ed class i had. so i think kids should take parenting instead of sex-ed. and take home the robotic babies for a week. how funt hat was! haha. but reeally schools dont wanna talk about sex so they let u find out on your own which is a blessing and a curse. but to everyone be safe if u are haqving sex. u wont die if u have sex (usually), but keep it in the back of your mind.

[maddieeee]

Ok this is just craziness.
I live in Alberta, Canada, and we get our sex ed in high school from this course we all have to take to graduate called CALM (Career And Life Management). In the course, they get someone from Planned Parenthood in to talk to us and they are totally open about everything from birth control to STDs. They also get people in to talk about sexual assault etc. They do mention that abstinence is the only absolute 100% way to guarantee you will not get pregnant or get an STD, but condoms and other methods are perfectly good options too, and they didn't tell lies about them or anything like a lot of these US stories seem to suggest. There is definitely no "abstinence only" policy. People trying to push that are such boneheads... makes me mad.
They definitely stressed that really bad serious things can happen to you if you're not careful (i.e. AIDS, unwanted pregnancy) but there was also a big emphasis on how to keep yourself safe overall, and we got all the facts.

[Melissa]

MELiSSA 16 : hEY UM MY SCHOOl dOSENt PROViD SEX-ED SO BASiClY MY fRiENdS ANd i TAKE iT UPON OWERSElfS AND TAlK AbOUt IT BUt ONE THING ALL MY FRIENDS BRING UP IS THAT THEY DONT HAVE SEX OUT OF 10 FRIEND ONLY 2 HAVE SEX NOT EVEN ON A DAY TO DAY STATIC, BUT ONCE OR TWICE, SO TO HERE THAT ALOT OF AMERICAN GIRLS ARE OUT THERE HAVEING SEX REALY SCARS ME AND THATS THE AGE THEY PUT OUT THERE AND IN OUR HEAD THTS OK TO HAVE SEX AT EVEN THO THEY SAY ITS NOT :PS KINDA OFF TOPIC. SORR

[amy]

UK sex-ed is exactly how it should be, except perhaps it should start a little earlier.

Explanatory but not pornographic.

Starts in year 5 (age 10) and continues every year after that.

It's basically secular, and preaches safe sex rather than abstinence, although we tend to do more of the biology and how and when and puberty and such. We don't tend to start on actual sex until Year 9 (age 14), by which time a lot of my friends had lost it already.

The exact content can depend on the teacher, since they make their own lesson plans, and parents can opt their children out of the programme, but other than that it's all good.

[Anonymous1]

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[LIzzy]

my county is an abstinence based system. i remember VIVIDLY! this one lady we had in 8th grade. i wish i could go back at look at her and punch her in the face. she talked about condoms. sure. but she scared us into not using them. she pulled out a latex glove. and told us that the glove is how ever many percent thicker than a condom. and then proceeded to break it into pieces with her finger nails. i wish i could go back and look at her and say "Since when do penis' have sharp pointy things on them that will do that?" she also had this big stuffed sperm thingy. it was this big yellow stuffed thing with a red tail. and it stretched across the whole room. she then held up a penny. and said "the aids viris compared to a single sperm is like being the size of a penny compared to this giant oversized sperm i have here... and condoms have pores on them. and blah blah the aids virus can leak thru the condom" (i exagerated what she said, but the end part was one thing she really did say) which, is a bunch of hooey. then. in high school. my teacher didnt bother with sex ed. he looked at us. and was like. "you know sex is bad. dont be stupid about it. ok. there we've done sex ed" i was so pissed at how lazy he was. i'd say honestly. my mom was my best sex ed teacher. she always wanted me to know everything about everything she never knew about when she was a kid. she got me books about everything and informed me to stay educated. i'm happy to say i've been having sex for almost a year now. have had more than one partner. and ALWAYS have used a condom. and none have broken on me yet. and i'm still not pregnant or have any std.

[Laura]

I've been in New Jersey schools for the majority of my educational experience. Currently I am in college. My "health class" was actually progressive compared to the majority of other posters. In middle school I had a funny-crazy health teacher that said things like "masturbation is healthy and good for you." She showed us how to put condoms on bananas. Also we learned about our bodies as they mature, saw a pregnancy on video, and we could ask questions at any time. I don't recall if we went into homosexual health ed but it was pretty thorough for a middle school sex ed. program.

In high school my health education program actually wasn't as detailed as in middle school (though it was the same public school system). The way the class was taught depended on the teacher. We had health education for one marking period (half a semester) every year. Each health education program focused on something different nutrition, drugs, sex, or dating. However sex was always briefly brought up as well as stds. We were taught about the variety of contraceptives and if someone asked they'd mention safer sex for homosexuals. We did cover things like orientation and even sexual disorders.

However ignorance did creep in when it came to the marking period when we dealt with dating and abuse. We watched two different videos in which a teenage boy killed his girlfriend. My health education teacher said teenagers were too immature to be dating. That was why such a horrible thing occurred in the video. Clearly the man has no sense of psychology in general. The boys were both abusive/ controlling personality types. Instead of basically telling us "avoid dating until you are no longer idiots (which somehow happens when you turn 18)." He should of told us what the signs of an abusive relationship was (and to note that women can abuse men too) and what a person can do in such a situation.

[anais]

well, since i'm homeschooled, i basically learned shit. i found everything out from my friends and the internet. when my mom does try to (REALLY AWKWARDLY) bring up sex, it's always: if you have sex you will DIE AND GO TO HELL. if you do drugs you will DIE AND GO TO HELL etc. heheheheh

[anais]

well, since i'm homeschooled, i basically learned shit. i found everything out from my friends and the internet. when my mom does try to (REALLY AWKWARDLY) bring up sex, it's always: if you have sex you will DIE AND GO TO HELL. if you do drugs you will DIE AND GO TO HELL etc. heheheheh

[female libido supplements]

Most of the time, sex education should be learned not in schools, but discussed in between peers and family relatives. With people who you trust but won't necessarily overprotect you nor tolerate you too much into the point of pushing you off a cliff. IMO, the sex ed they're implying is like strangling you and feeding you with bullcrap. In the end it's still our own judgement and decisions that would either make us or break us.

[Melllllllyyy M(:]

" 'SEX IS BAD, YOU ARE GUARANTEED AN STD AND PREGNANCY. PLUS, IT GOES AGAINST YOUR RELIGIOUS BELIEFS!'"
okay thats fucking bull shit.
this is the exact fucking reason i hate school teachers, and im not religious.
i hatee when people tell me what to do.
its annoying.
ill do what i fucking please with my body and thats not the schools bussiness or desicion!

at my school.
well the teachers all hyped on that whole ABSTINACE ONLY bullshit and i just want to slap them.the only one who isnt like that is my ROP allied health teacher.
shes like do what u please your boddy not mine.
but please be safe. and she handed out condoms and shitt.

hahhaha.

[Samantha]

I haven't had sex ed at my school because I didn't have to take that class(you can get out of it with a signed paper,which isn't always the best thing since not everyone knows about sex but it's not a class you take until your a junior,most of the time anyways)I think at our school we just need more sex ed,I mean theres ways to get information like at our family resource center and everything but not everyone knows that and not everyone is comfortable going there to talk to an adult about sex.
At my middle school the sex ed was pretty bad it just made me scared to have sex but didn't really teach me much about protection and I think without my friends and the internet I wouldn't have known like anything about sex.:P
Now I know though and my friends know they can come to me which I think is good and I'm glad.
I just wish my brother had talked to me more in detail since he had unprotected sex thinking it was ok since he didn't finish,I'm like haven't you ever heard of precum he's like no.I'm like omg and smacked him and told him to go get condoms.:P

[mickey]

at my school sex ed is great my teachers talks about what she feels like.whats better is that shes pregnant. we had it in grade 8 for stds but now its full on sex there arent any rules and u can ask whatever you like they dont push abstinence just say that thats the safest way but if you really want to have sex then theyll tell you how to be safe. if your too uncomfortable to ask a question out loud then she places a little box on her desk where everyone writes a question puts it in and she answers. we talk about sex stds pregnancy physical things periods everything its great and if theres any rules on what the can talk about then they dont folow:D

[chrystlin_cuppicake]

at my school, abstinence is pushed a lot on the kids, but thats because its a catholic school and its against the faith to enter into pre-marital sex.

for myself, i believe in waiting until marriage, simply because i want it to be special. not something i regret, you know? and in my opinion, if you feel so strongly about me that you just have to sleep with me, then you should want to spend your life with me.

but in general, i would say any waiting is good. even if it's not till marriage, waiting is better than giving yourself out on the first date. it helps to develop self-control, and self-respect, protects you from common risks that go along with an intimate relationship, and it makes it a lot easier for the first time to really mean something and not be something you regret.

anyway, that's just my humble opinion :P

[Tania]

In a way believe we didn't have to bad of sex ed I'm from canada and from reading most of these prosts I can tell that our school wasn't as strict with sex ed but I also went a public school all my life. They basically told us about condoms and birth control and all that and how it worked and about pregnancy and STD's but did always go back to abstinence is the best. The one thing I do remember was in gr.12 I volunteered to teach a gr.9 class about safe sex for this aids campaign we were doing and I was surprised at the lack of knowledge most of these kids had.

[countrychick]

I am in the 9th grade and sex-ed at our school is HORRIBLE (well i think it is anyway)! When we learned about STDs we did a packet where we wrote the symptoms, treatment, complications, and preventions down and we discussed them a little bit. Well the subject was kinda awkward anyways because just about everyone was afraid to ask questions about it. Well the teacher told us what to write down under each category and she was very vague on the subject. Well when it came to the prevention part her only answer was ABSTINENCE!!! She WOULD NOT tell us any other ways of prevention. When she was asked of other ways of prevention she said the ONLY way to prevent an STD or pregnancy is ABSTINENCE!!! I was furious!!! I REALLY wish they would teach us about safe sex becuase most people can't honestly say that they made it through high school without having sex. I haven't had sex personally but me and my boyfriend have talked about the possibility of it happening. And I'm usually considered one of the "good girls" so if I'm thinking about having sex then I know that other teens are too. I just REALLY wish they would teach safe sex in ALL schools. Maybe there wouldn't be as many pregnant teens and as many STDs if they did. I'm from a pretty small "country" town and we have quite a few pregnant girls at our school and I think if they would teach us safe sex we wouldn't have so many.

[kathryn]

i live in maryland...when i took sex ed in tenth grade two years ago, they pushed mostly abstinence...we were told about different types of STDs and contraceptives but we didnt really discuss anything...now my little bro is taking sex ed and they finally r teaching safe sex...now they watch a birth video, a how to put on a condom video, and all this other stuff

i was like finally they teach this stuff...yea adults and teachers may want teens to be abstinent, but the reality is that teens have sex and need to be taught how to be safe

[hannie]

I'm glad we didn't move to the US when I was 12. I live in Belgium, where we have very low numbers of teen pregnancies and there just isn't this culture of fear around sex. It's a part of life. We didn't really have a sex ed class, we just got the info in biology class. In sixth grade we learnt about puberty and how sex works and basic contraception, in 8th grade we got more of that and we went into more detail about how things work. Then in 10th grade we had what was known under the students as "sex day" where we passed around every type of birth control known to man, we discussed al sorts of things, and where allowed to ask anything we wanted. Then in 12th grade we actually learnt really detailed biology of the development of sperm and eggcells and of the embryo. We went into all the detail about the hormonal cycles of the birth and prenatal testing etc. We learnt about the different types of birth control and exactly how they worked. Everything was very scientific, but that's what you get in a science class.

[Annmarie]

I mostly look things up on the internet to find out things about sex. My school only has a 'health class' and it talks about everything BUT sex. They only touch on the subject and don't really inform kids about the important stuff. I think that teachers in a public school should be honest and open and not share their personal opinions but rather stick with the TRUTH. I personally don't think people should go about uninformed about sex or else someone will take advantage of their ignorance.

[kay]

funny, i live in maryland too. and when i read all these horrific posts and then scrolled down and saw elle from northern maryland explain how comprehensive her sex ed was i completely agreed. i live pretty close to dc, and all i can say is that in middle school, yeah, they pushed not having sex. because lets face it, thirteen year old girls dont need to be having it anyway. but junior year, when everyone is required to take a year long health class at my school, we had a no nonsense teacher who was open to talking about sex with a bit of sarcasm. she knew kids have it, she knew what kids needed to learn, and she knew that she should push safe sex over abstinence. we saw videos, read the textbooks, all the classic stuff. but it was really about protecting ourselves. we even had a "birth control lady" as they called her come into the class and explain EVERY single method of birth control out there, from sponges to shots to condoms to pills, everything. i feel so sorry for all the kids out there who have horrible experiences with sex ed. its really important to know what goes on with your bodies and how to keep yourself safe. i hope maybe one day everywhere in the nation can be as open to helping teenagers rather than force feeding them the same abstinence only bullshit.

[Froggurl03]

When I was in 7th grade, which was lat year, we had kinda-sorta sex ed. We learned alot about STD's and saw pix, which was gross. We learned more about periods. We learned about the male reproductive organs. It pushed abstinence but I don't think we had the whole lesson so I think we would have learned a little about contriceptives. It was taught by two of our female coaches. The one was great, she was a tomboy so you would think "this is going to be awful" but infact she was funny at some points and was a good teacher. The other one was pretty good, too. The first one told us that the youngest pregnancy she had ever heard of/seen was a sixth grader with a two year-old at home. I don't know if we'll have sex-ed this year but I hope so. I doubt it'd be very helpful I live in a small, southern, predominately Christian town so it'd probably only be abstinence-only.

[yesyesyes]

"Sex ed" in my 7th grade year was not sex ed at all. The previous years, kids were shown a slide show of pictures of vaginas/penises taken over by STDs. I guess that was to scare them off, but in my year they cut the slideshow completely. A doctor came in to talk to us about STDs because it wasn't taught in a class, it was taught at a "health fair". In my year he chose a strange way of teaching, he made a multiple choice trivia game about STDs and when the answer was revealed, he would give us a breif explanation of the question.
Now, I really wanted to kick this man in the head, or something. Of course, he was all abstinence. One of the first questions was "when is it right to have sex?". The answer was only after your married, and he told us the purpose of marriage was to care for kids, so if we were to have sex and have kids, we would need to be married. This bothered me because, what if you were gay? I was very dissapointed that homosexuality was not acknowlegded at all during the hour. Another answer that was also basically marriage was something like how to protect yourself from STDs. He told us if everyone waited until they got married it would be alright. This is the part where he literally told everyone: "Condoms do not work". I couldn't even believe it. He made it seem like they literally had absolutely no effect when you're having sex whatsoever. This really bothered me because that year, in the highschool, 9 girls were pregnant, and telling kids that condoms don't work is something that shouldn't even be legal. Also, another thing he told us was that when you need information about sex, you should never go somewhere like Planned Parenthood. He told us that they made money off of our mistakes/STDs, so they would give us faulty information (or something like that) for their own benefit.
These are just some of the things we were told and I can't remember all the parts that made me want to scream. I really hope someday we get proper education in there, though. Throughout the whole thing I wanted to stand up and tell everyone the truth, and arm everyone with the proper knowledge. It makes me really sad to see kids being taught like that.

[Roxie]

we got the basics, like, bare-bones, of it in 6th grade, then a refresher in 7th grade. that was fun. we had a male teacher and a primaraly female class. he couldnt say the word vagina without blushing or stammering. in 8th grade, we had a great teacher. she said if the law didnt let her answere the question, we were enchoraged to call her on her own time, where she was allowed to talk. we got the whole "Sex is bad and you'll get pregnant and die" thing from the movies, but after each, she enchoraged us to ask questions and get real statistics. she enchoraged us to wait, but also told us the truth about contaceptives. in 9th grade, we didnt even talk about it. atleast, not in class.... apperently, now freshman at my school get a half a year of it, but i missed it by that much. michigan's abstinance thing sucks..... but hey, 16 is legal.

[Jayjay]

in my last year of primary school which i thinnk would be 5th grade(im british btw) we learnt about how sex happens and why we should wait until we are 16 and the rules.
now im in the 8th grade (i think) and we learnt about contraception and stds and more laws. but from what i can gather, american and british sex education laws are a lot different. my teacher answered everyone of our questions and we arent taught about absitence, we are just "advised" to wait until 16. we are also taught about how stds are passed and how they were created and about how a girl is just as responsible for providing contraception as the guy is.
you americans sound like you've got it pretty crap.

[Dylan]

We didn't talk about sex at all this year (9th grade). Just drugs and eating disorders and everything we've done since we started taking health. Last year was okay, I think? My teacher ended every sentence with BUT THE ONLY FOOL-PROOF WAY IS... which is true, but you only need to hear it once or twice. She told us not to make condoms out of saran wrap or put two on. That's really all I remember, except having to look up three STDs and write about all of the lovely effects. Funfunfun.

[Selene]

Not sure if this is actual "sex ed" but in my 6th grade "Health" class, (I'm still in 6th) we are learning about sex, and all we learned is that every time you have sex, you will get pregnant and get 15 different STD's, not once were the words "condom"or "birth control" mentioned, however, they never actually said "abstinence" or "wait until marriage" , weird much?????

[Karin]

Luckily, I've had good sex ed. We learned about STD's and condoms and stuff in our school books and that using preservatives is the best way to prevent illness and unexpected pregnancies. Also, we had a black suitcase with several preservatives in it. I remember that someone had to put a condom over a plastic penis!

[Khaneisha]

I guess im fortunate in my pursuit of decent sex-ed in my school. I attend a school in New York..A public H.S. which is like a private H.S. But anyways last year when I ws in 9th grade we were taught that you can get an STD from having sex... We werent told not to have sex and that it was bad.. We were walked through the reproductive systems and how they work... This year we have health class but we dont talk much about anything else... we learned alot last year and we were taught about date rape and boyfriends and girl friends and peer pressure. Although this year's health class stinks so far- we might just learn an extension of what we learned last year..

[Khaneisha]

I guess im fortunate in my pursuit of decent sex-ed in my school. I attend a school in New York..A public H.S. which is like a private H.S. But anyways last year when I ws in 9th grade we were taught that you can get an STD from having sex... We werent told not to have sex and that it was bad.. We were walked through the reproductive systems and how they work... This year we have health class but we dont talk much about anything else... we learned alot last year and we were taught about date rape and boyfriends and girl friends and peer pressure. Although this year's health class stinks so far- we might just learn an extension of what we learned last year..

[Hallie]

Most teacher's and,or councilers are kind of sencetive when the subject sex and std's come to mind. How ever what is a load of shit is the fact that peple are saying that aids come frome homosexuality. When most of us know that aids was most comenly recemended, that aids came from Africa whitch was spread by monkey's.
Aids is known as an STD and is able to be transfered by sharp objects submited to the blood stream. So there for it has to be spread by physical contact so it can't be spread by someone rubbing blood on there hand's whitch of course is a stupid guess or usumption.
What i have heard in my common days of knowledge is tha someone had sex with a monkey and had sex with anouther person that had sex with anouther person so on and so forth, whitch spraded the fatal desiese. There you can suck on those apples!

[Tegan]

I live in Canada but I went to a religious school for the first 10 years of my schooling. Some of the teachers were better than others. In religion class, our sex ed./ "family and domestic living"units were complete bullshit. Our religion teacher actually gave us a booklet explaining why homosexuality is a sin and marriage between homosexuals should be illegal. Then when I tried to ask questions (note: not argue, just ask) about it, the teacher completely freaked out and changed the subject to how "lovely weddings are! how splendid children are! We must all be fruitful! Have many babies! Every time you have sex with your husband it is a wonderful experience in which you are ONE WITH GOD but only if you're open to BABIES or else it is a BAD BAD SIN!".
Health class was pretty good (a week long unit in year 9, taught by my gym teacher) and I thought my teacher tried her best to be non-judgemental and purely factual. Being a relgious school, I still don't think we discussed orientation at all and I'm pretty sure there was still quite the bias and stereotype of that girls are weak and only want a man to love whereas boys are skeezy and only want sex. In gr. 7 and 8 it was a lot of the abstinence-only videos and herpes scare tactics.
I think I've learned the most from science class. In bio we learned about anatomy of the reproductive organs and our teacher went through the functions of each part of the anatomy, explained common STDs, explained fetal development, and he even talked about different contraceptives. That said, I noticed in my biology text book from Gr. 12 (published by the USA college board btw) that in a chapter talking about reproduction it gave a chart of common contraceptives in North America. It actually listed abstinence (with the note "100% effective and with NO SIDE EFFECTS AT ALL") and then below it, condoms were said to have only a 70% effectiveness and that they had "no KNOWN side effects".
Wow, long post.

[tegan]

I live in New Jersey and we get okay sex ed, but we start taking it in 11th grade which annoys me because most kids are having sex by that time anyways. I'm personally abstinent which is rare nowadays but I feel sex ed should be available and detailed and should be taught to everyone. I feel abstinence is a great choice to make but teaching it to reluctant teens isn't going to solve anything. Teens are going to have sex no matter what anyone says and they should be taught to practice it safely.

[noe]

I never even got sex-ed. The closest we got was when I was in 6th grade and they only talked about how babies came about and what sex was, but they didn't talk about anything else. The only reason I know so much about sex, birth control, and STD's is because I did my own research and I came about this website.

[Natalie]

I live in Souther California and I can remember having comprehensive sex ed in 5th, 7th, 8th, and 9th grade. My school district is really great when it comes to sex ed. My teachers usually answer every question. I'm sorry to all you people who live in the east/south.

[Elle]

wow, this makes me really sad.

My sex ed (i just finished it) was really straight-forward and factual. We were showed a lot of tapes that didn't sugarcoat and none that promoted any stereotypes. My teacher answered any questions we had unbiased. He was pretty funny too, so he was cool. I knew abstinence-only was prevalent in places, but I didn't think it was THIS bad. I've had comprehensive sex ed all my life.

I live in nothern Maryland, by the way.

[sammyjoshmoe]

The only "sex ed" I ever received in school was a week-long unit in health class.
Needless to say, it was far from comprehensive. On top of that, the whole thing obviously made the teacher uncomfortable, and reluctant to answer many questions, or do anything more than read out of the textbook. Overall, I don't feel i benefitted at all from the whole ordeal, and ended up answering any questions I had by myself, using websites like this one.

[Casiphia]

You only get sex ed at our school if you take gym, so it is optional. The gym teacher also showed a video about Captain Condom so now the school has a bunch of immature kids running around and pretending to be him.

[Dayna Marie]

The sex ed at my school is not terrible, but still pretty bad. All of our videos are so out of date (like the AIDS one was made before we had the medicine so a victim can live a full healthy life...and the teacher didn't correct anything in it) and like, a billion excercises that show that sex gives pieces of us away and when we have sex with someone we have sex with everyone they've slept with and so on. I swear, I practicly slept through the entire week we did that last year.

[anon]

My sex ed was defiantly not as bad as that, but mine was...vague and they only showed us a video. In year 7,8, and 9 was better but I don't remember much about it. They just told us to read the text book most of the time. Most of the important things I found out about it was on the internet, searching it up. I find that's the best way for me.