When did YOU first have "sex education" in school?

[underpants]

or did you?

if so when?

Me? I don't know if we ever officially had sex education-we pretty much learned it on the fly and from old Oui magazines (why or how did they always end up in the woods?).

I have to say that some of the information in my stepfather's "Penthouse Forum" magazines were VERY instructive and still utilized today ;-):9

So when did you get your state/county/township approved instruction?

[AlCzervik]

1. junior year in high school, Ms. Lahaise and she let all fly

[livinginphotographs]

2. Fifth grade.

The ONLY time I had sex-ed.

I kept waiting for it, and it never came. "Debbie Does Dallas" was way more informative.

[GOPisEvil]

3. We got "the movies" in 5th or 6th grade, I think.

Then there was "Health" in 9th grade.

[Kellanved]

4. Elementary School, 2nd grade AFAIR

Might have been third.
After that (getting more specific) in sixth, eight than tenth grade.

[daisygirl]

5. Not sure which grade - I was 16

It was a bit late for me.

[Nikia]

6. Depends on what you consider sex ed

In fifth grade, we watched a video about the changes that we were or would be going through and the basics about reproduction.
In ninth grade, we had a couple weeks instruction about reproductive organs, the process of reproduction, and STDs. Our teacher didn't do a very good job because he was a young devotely Catholic man who was not in a relationship. Sex was something that he really had a hard time talking about. The other health teacher, a married middle aged woman with two children, was said to be a much better teacher on the subject.

[LiberalinNC]

7. I was in the 7th grade at a Catholic school!

Not to show my age but it was 1976-1977

[HawkerHurricane]

8. Never, really, do to bad timing.

LA public schools had Sex Ed in 6th and 7th grade. I spent those years in a Catholic school, where sex ed wasn't covered until 12th grade... by which time I was back in the LA public schools.

(Interesting note: My Catholic School had as many pregnant grads (12) as my Public School... except the Catholic School had under 100 girls in the graduating class, while the public one had over 1000...)

[Left Is Write]

9. We saw "the girls' movie" starting in 4th grade.

It was not shown during school hours - it was shown in the evening, and we were asked to bring our mothers with us. They showed it in the cafeteria, then served punch and cookies during the "question and answer" session afterward.

At that time, there was no corresponding "boys' movie."

In junior high, sex education was incorporated into a general health class.

In high school, we had "Human Sexuality."


Edited to add: I was in 4th grade during the 1975-76 school year.

[Wapsie B]

10. I didn't.

Sixth graders in our school were seeing "the movie" about sex in health class. I kept hearing about it and was really curious about what was in it and looked forward to seeing it. Well I got to 6th grade and, you guessed it, no more movie. My guess is that some konservative fundies got their g strings in a wad about the moral depravity of it all and cried to the school board. There was nothing else to replace it. No textbooks, no class on sex, no nothing. Not even in high school. We may has well been run by the Baptists or Mormons as far as sex ed went. Never learned anything at home either.

[CitySky]

11. fifth grade & high school

In fifth grade, girls were pulled aside to learn about menstruation, I recall. the basic plumbing was all taught, but the more, um, personal concepts were still fuzzy.


In High School, I took Physiology. Juniors & seniors. The teacher began the year saying, in effect, "We're going to cover all of the major systems in the body over the course of year, but not necessarily in the same order as in your textbook. 'Cause the textbook puts the Reproductive System in Chapter 11, which means we'd hit it around April. But if I'm gonna have someone coming in here pregnant in February, then April is too late! So we're going to cover the Reproductive System first..." The unit was informative, appropriate, and a great ice-breaker for the class, in which we spent the rest of the year dissecting things, as I recall.

Of course, this was in California.

[ayeshahaqqiqa]

12. I think 7th grade

I remember some sort of film that showed a diagram of what happened to start reproduction-it told me nothing about STDs, or anything at all about contraception. My mother gave me a pamphlet about menstruation and at the same time told me not to get pregnant because it would 'disgrace the family'. Neither she nor the school told me a thing about relationships or how to detect a sexual predator. I was nearly raped at age 17 because of this ignorance (a man stopped me while I was walking to my grandmother's and asked for directions; I stupidly got into his car-no nobody had told me not to accept rides from strangers! The only thing that saved me was that I told him my age-he literally dumped me out of his car and zoomed off). Everything about sex was hush hush and people who talked about it, especially my family, were very embarressed about it. I literally didn't learn anything about it until I was married.

[Left Is Write]

17. I still remember the pamphlet we got at "the girls' movie."

It was light green and had cutsie illustrations of a cutsie young girl who wore dresses. It had all kinds of advice on how to be "fresh" and "dainty" during that time of the month. It also had advice on how to deal with mood issues, although I didn't really get that at the time.

[TheCentepedeShoes]

30. Wonder if that was the same booklet

that we got (6th grade, 1960). The blond girl looked somewhat like Carol Linley, or so everyone thought. And it had that creepy guy with the mustache pointing at a chart of female plumbing. IIRC, that was the only sex-ed we got in school. Nothing else, nada, zip, zilch.

[Ruffhowse]

13. 6th grade in elementary school in Washington State back in the 60's.

[eyesroll]

14. I got the "I'm going to bleed from WHERE?!?!" film in 4th grade

The boys got their film in 5th.

I've known how babies were made since I was about 4, though, when I asked my dad and he gave a very rudimentary, but correct, explanation. I think we got the full-on mechanics-of-reproduction education in junior high.

[underpants]

15. LINK to-The companion General Discussion thread

http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=view_all&address=104x2854140

[The Velveteen Ocelot]

16. 5th grade, I think.

They sent the boys into another room and showed us a rather cryptic movie about what Kotex is for. I remained rather puzzled about the whole thing, and the movie did not enlighten us in any specific way about why, exactly, one would ever need Kotex. This was in 1961. We eventually learned the details about where the various body parts go from the older kids.

[Union Thug]

18. 7th Grade Health Class, Mrs. Tucker. /eom

[deadparrot]

19. 3rd grade, but I knew about sex much earlier.

[TheMightyFavog]

20. 6th grade....

It was all the "this is waht's happening to your body" stuff about puberty.

And then in high school, the compleltey ineffective abstinince only bullshit kicked in.

[HEyHEY]

21. grade 6 I believe

None of the naughty stuff then....just strict biology

[proud2BlibKansan]

22. When I was in 4th or 5th grade

the girls came to school one evening with our moms and they showed us a movie about Minnie Mouse getting her first period. My mom and I laughed all the way home.

[underpants]

25. Ah yes Disney learning tools

See they started doing that a long time ago.

[Connie_Corleone]

23. I was absent that day.

Turned out, that was the day they taught everything about sex.

:silly:

[NNadir]

24. I was thirteen and my best friend told me. I learned the rest by doing

shortly afterward.

To avoid the pratfalls of "learning by doing," my wife and I recently discussed all the details with our ten year old son. He was horrified and wants to remain celibate for eternity. :-).

BTW, although I didn't want to sound like that idiot Bush, I told him that celibacy is fine; there's nothing wrong with it. I told him Issac Newton was celibate, and it made my son happy to hear that.

[Politicub]

26. Sixth grade

Interesting question. I grew up in a small town in NC, and was very naive about sex then. I remember the sex ed class being taught by a nurse from the health dept. or something. The boys and girls were taught in seperate classes.

I remember she told the class about wet dreams that boys sometimes have, and it freaked me out! I talked to her after the class about it. LOL

I went to a different school for Jr. high and the one hour of sex ed instruction each year was taught by the PE coach. I had a MAJOR crush on him then. :)

(on edit: I think there was a film, too. It must have been the dramatization of a wet dream that freaked me out so much)

[underpants]

29. Apparently 5th or 6th grade is about the norm

What education we got we got from a PE coach too. I think it must have been in 7th grade.

[Jesus H. Christ]

27. menstruastion in 5th, STDs 7th, everything else high school "health."

Segregated in the 5th, coed later. We had the whole grade in the gym for the 7th grade STD film. They were talking about points in the body where STDs can be transmitted. They had basic anatomically correct diagrams, pretty much silhouettes really. They talked about the penis, the vagina, the mouth (highlighting each in turn).. and then got to the anus. The whole thing broke down then, the whole audience erupted in gasps or laughter. Apparently some of us kids had never considered the concept of anal sex before, or if we had, we thought it was the funniest damn thing ever.

[fluffernutter]

28. 6th grade, but i have to agree that "Penthouse Forum"

was a much better form of instruction ;) of course, that was a few years later...