- A couple of months ago, the sex education notice came home in my nine-year-old son’s backpack. I didn’t realize that, in our district, sex ed starts in the fourth grade. Another sign of the state having more access to my baby than I sometimes wish.
When I handed the note to my mate at the dinner table, our son said with something of a proud smile, “I told Mrs. Reverby we’ve already talked about it at home.”
I can't take this seriously, given that the first 3/4 of the article is the author just kind of bragging about how smart and so very current her son is. That's what the article felt like. A vehicle for bragging about her great kid. Which couldn't she have just made a Facebook post or something? Also, if you're going to write an article ostensibly about teaching kids the whole sex-for-pleasure principle, what kind of sense does it make to only refer to your husband/partner as your "mate?" Doesn't that send a mixed signal? Also, what was with the weird dig at the beginning about "there goes the government, all up in our kids' business again, bringing sex into the classroom earlier than we want," and then following it up with a long polemic about how kids don't have enough basic info about sex? Also, just ugh. Besides all of that, I'm not entirely sure where she's coming from. I started sex ed somewhere around the fifth or sixth grade I think, and I remember the class spending a lot of time focusing on how people can derive pleasure from sex. HIV/AIDS transmission was mentioned under the general rubric of STD's, and wasn't any sort of code for the evils of gay sex. It was code for "sex feels good, but if you do it too early and improperly, your genitals will shrivel up and fall off and you will die." Which was regressive in its own way, but more benignly regressive than the author is painting it. Especially since nobody took that part of it seriously- neither kids nor teachers.
You had a very different experience from myself and JackTheBandit. While I went to a public school, sex for pleasure was not a thing that was talked about in sex ed in 6th grade. The benefits of abstinence and the horrors of STD's were more of the focal points once the basic anatomy was covered. Sex ed was at best a topic treated neutrally and brushed under the carpet until we were all older, and at worst treated in a negative and somewhat severe manner.I started sex ed somewhere around the fifth or sixth grade I think, and I remember the class spending a lot of time focusing on how people can derive pleasure from sex.
Yeah, I was just reading some of the comments- the best I can figure is that I experienced sex ed in a private school setting. My wife and I have this recurrent philosophical debate (and by "philosophical" I mean "loaded with emotional and cultural subtext") about private v. public education- we're about due for another one. I've never thought to bring up the whole messaging independence thing. But I'm willing to bet that her sex ed experience was a lot more along the lines of yours. Then again, it could be even worse at a denominational private school. I dunno.
I can vaguely understand why parents don't want to talk about it. I suppose they don't want to see the 'innocence' of their children taken away, but that's such an antiquated concept to begin with. They're aware their children will be having sex shortly, and for pleasure, and all studies have shown that the more honest, open, and educational you and the educators in the subject, the lower the rates of pregnancy and STDs. Of course this seems counter intuitive to many parents, because they refuse to see their children as thinking humans. That's where the problem lies.
I really want this part of human culture that's terribly afraid of being honest about the body to go away. It would even seem there's enough evidence that it's caused far more harm and difficulty than any good at all. My mom never made any effort to teach me about sex, and even to this day she only really makes passing comments on not getting any women pregnant. My father did better. He explained all the slang and code words and such, but in an honest way. It was always clear that sex was for making babies and it felt good to do so. That was the good part, but we never got into any specifics at all. Everything I learned about the anatomy basically came from individual research on the internet and biology texts in school. Speaking of which, because I went to Catholic School straight through HS, there was never any real sex ed.
There is a great PSA to be made along the lines of "talk to your children or the Internet will."Everything I learned about the anatomy basically came from individual research on the internet
I went to a Catholic school in the UK. There was pretty much no sex education apart from two areas: 1. In science class, looking at male and female anatomy. 2. In R.E. class, being taught (in a semi-impartial manner) that all contraception aside from the rhythm method is considered sinful by the Catholic Church.
Point number 2 is the strangest part. They were basically condoning not using condoms to a bunch of newly sexually active young males. It doesn't help that all these young men come from poor urban environments.
A little perspective: When I was 8, the entertainment was a bank of 6 video games at the drug store across the street from the high school. In order to keep me and my friends from playing the video games, the pharmacist's son told us that they caused AIDS. This was plausible because eight year olds were not told anything about AIDS yet the news was so full of AIDS that at eight years old, we could identify a Kaposy's Sarcoma by name and by sight. When I was seventeen, I had to bring a permission slip home to see a couple speakers in my Humanities class - a weird elective with only about 30 kids in it that allowed me to stack English credits to graduate a semester early. You see, we were going to have gay men show up to answer questions. And despite the fact that these gay men only spoke to our class, no less than three churches in town rallied their congregations to demand that our Humanities teachers be fired. And it's not like the town was anti-science. Sex ed for us, in 6th grade, was "girls have vaginas. Boys have penises. Put them together and you will get a disease." People in Santa Fe died of "gay plague." Charlie "Devil went down to Georgia" Daniels released songs about beating up queers at gay bars: Now, we've got gay marriage legalized in 19 states. AIDS is something that happens to people, not divine retribution for sin. Girls are being vaccinated for HPV, morning after pills are widely available and sex ed is happening in 4th grade. I'm a firm believer in sex ed. I'm a firm believer in openness and confidence. But I also think that laughing and pointing at the prudes who can't quite handle it as astonishingly easily as an intersex researcher at Northwestern isn't helpful. My mother taught human anatomy at alternative medical schools in Santa Fe. I went to my first lesbian wedding "ceremony" in 1985, back when Heritage USA was as big as Disneyland and Tom Hanks was fucking mermaids in Splash, not Antonio Banderas in Philadelphia. And my mother would always overshare about human sexuality when she was drunk. It didn't make me educated, it made me alienated from my peers. We've come a long way, baby. There are christian parents out there right now having to reconcile between "heavy petting is a sometimes food" at school and "god hates fags" at grandma and grandpa's house. Slow and steady has been winning the battle and poking fun at the rear guard never ends well.
If heavy petting is a sometimes food, can we build an alternative food pyramid? Incidentally, I googled the food pyramid and it has gotten a lot more complicated since I first encountered it about 15 years go. Apparently we have more foods now.
Ahhh, yes. My Plate and its controversies. To be fair, the idea that kids oughtta be carb-loading came directly from the farm lobby and was pretty terrible, too. As I recall, the school lunch program was run by the Army up until Nixon. After Nixon, it was run by the lobbyists.