(no subject)

[seren.livejournal.com]

helloooo
I am all new and pink :>
Yesterday I had a lecture on sexuality at school, and how schools teach sexuality. I found it very very very interesting indeed and have chosen to write my coursework for this module on the subject. I would like to ask everyone to write about their own experiences of how schools dealt with sexuality, (ie people seeing themselves as sexual beings for the first time and changing bodies and stuff), partly for my own interest but also because I may be able to use some of this for my essay. But Im not sure how I would ever explain in my essay that I found you on all on a livejournal community called vaginapagina :p
Various things to think about :
How did schools deal with menstruation?
Would you say that your school conveyed homophobic attitudes in teaching?
How was knowledge about changing bodies etc conveyed amongst friends - did any of you hear any interesting urban legends and believe them for an embarrasingly long time?
What was your school's sex education like - embarrassing? scientific? non existant?

that will do for now, thanks :>

Comments

[eatme69.livejournal.com]

Sex ed at my school is just about non exsistent. In 5th and 6th grades the girls and boys are put into two seperate rooms and watch videos on "growing up and changing bodies" and then we're givin little pamphlet type things, but other than that we really don't have a sex education class. My school really needs to get one, though. Maybe there wouldn't be so many sluts at my school if they had been taught early enough about it. I know one girl has a new boyfriend every few weeks, and she has sex with them all.

Re:

[seren.livejournal.com]

thats exactly what my school was like, and you can tell, because half of the girls who have left had babies within a year or two!!

[therealocelot.livejournal.com]

Funny, I was just thinking about this yesterday.

I was wondering how they'd handle sex ed in a situation like in

Ender's Game

(where there's a bunch of 6-12 year old kids, very predominantly male but a few females, being trained as soldiers). I came to the conclusion that it would be included as part of health education from the very start, in a straightforward manner, with no seperation of males or females or special pullout classes or any of those other things that make it seem secret and forbidden.

The complete opposite of the sex-education I went through, in other words :) But I think it would have to be that way in an environment (like in

Ender's Game

) where the differences between the sexes are deemphasized, and everyone lived together in close quarters.

They started sex education in my school in 4th grade (for girls. 5th, I think, for boys). This is, IMO, too late. I was developing breasts by 3rd grade, and though I didn't get my period until 13 or so, my grandmother got hers when she was 9, and that's not all that unusual.

They pulled out the girls for a few days during PE class, and showed us movies, mainly about menstruation and other body changes. Then we got "What's happening to my body?" propoganda from feminine hygeine companies.

I don't think we were told much of anything about the opposite sex, since the next year (when the boys started getting sex ed, too) we all tried to find copies of the books that they gave to the boys.

In sixth grade, we were still segregated by sex. My main memories are of my teacher coming in with a tableful of different menstrual products and explaining how the person at the checkout line had looked at her like she was nuts, and then the girl standing next to me had a seizure. Really. That kind of overshadowed anything else that happened.

One of those years, we watched the video "The Miracle of Life", though that may not have been till 8th grade.

We didn't have sex ed. in 7th grade. We did in 8th grade. This time, some of it was together, and some was segregated. I think we talked more about STDs, pregnancy, and so on this time around.

Based on comments from males around the time of sex ed, it seems that they learned that females smell like fish.

In high school, sex ed. was covered as part of a one semester health class.

I can't remember ever really having any false beliefs about sex - usually the first I heard of urban legends was statements that they weren't true. My particular group of friends was still playing dolls and make believe in middle school, so it wasn't really a subject that came up much. Also, all our parents had been pretty good about properly educating us. When it was discussed, it was usually in terms of embarrasment - my friend making fun of me because I had pubic hair, us making fun of a mutual friend because she wanted a bra. Being embarrased about needing to borrow a pad. Stuff like that.

Sexuality was never really discussed at all. In fact, sex was never really discussed, beyond the fact that it can get you pregnant, you can get STDs, and rape is painful. I wouldn't say that this promoted homosexuality, though it didn't really lead to a sexually accepting environment, either.

So, as a whole, a lot of scientific and a lot of embarrasing. While I came out of it with a reasonable technical understanding of sex, I don't consider it all that great a program.

[therealocelot.livejournal.com]

And I apparently can't properly write html...sorry about that.

Sex Ed in school

[nuwanda-1998.livejournal.com]

I graduated from highschool 20 years ago this June.

When I was in school we had puberty ed in sixth grade. This consisted of the girls and boys viewing films in separate rooms with construction paper taped over the little window in the door so no younger children or children of the opposite sex could peak in and view the material. It was run by a same-sex teacher. It was about sprouting hair where you didn't have any before, about menstruating, about our changing bodies. Nothing mind-blowing... I learned more from my Mother.

In the tenth grade we had sex ed class which was part of health class and included information on intercourse and conception, pregnancy, and birth control. Abortion was never mentioned. The forms of bith control discussed were the pill, condoms, and spermacidal creams. We discussed STDs which didn't include AIDS because that wasn't a concern at that time. Once again I learned much more from my Mother regarding sex.

I wasn't very impressed with either my puberty classes or my sex ed classes. The teachers in the puberty classes seemed uncomfortable and eager to just pass out the information, pray to GAWD no one asked any questions, and get the hell out of there. The teacher in my sex ed class was a juvenile male coach and phys ed teacher who taught health class to fill his day and spent most of sex ed squirting spermacidal creams onto the ceiling, blowing up condoms like balloons and batting them about the room, and cracking sexist and tasteless jokes.

And sex ed should be offered in grade school, not tenth grade. I was 16 years old in tenth grade, and the man running that class didn't tell me anything I didn't already know, and didn't tell me a lot of things my Mother had already informed me of.

[ex-were306.livejournal.com]

i'm a young 'un so i just went through high school health class late last year.

the sex ed section was mostly just on genitalia diagrams and STD's (they're STI's [Sexually Transmitted Infection] now). we had one day where a slideshow containing pictures of diseased genitalia was brought in...many "ewwww"'s. there was a basic section on menstruation; if you had any questions, you just asked (i.e., if an ovary gets taken out, do you still have your period as often?

and the topic of sexual orientation was completely avoided. scientific and slightly embarrassing.