When should students learn Sex Ed?

Sex Ed got taught to me in grade 7 (like 12 years old?) and grade 9. Got a solely "this is how our bodies work" sexlesss version in grade 5. They taught all the methods of birth control but with the quick disclaimer "abstinence is the only 100% way not get pregnant". I guess I agree, with how Ontario did it, but maybe slightly earlier.

Ontario's newest premier decided to go back to the 1998 edition of sex Ed because the 2015 one was "too extreme". I'm not sure if there was an edition in between the '98 and '15 editions, but the kids now might be getting a more ignorant version than I did LOL

 

My school was fortunately good with that. The biology teacher taught us sex ed. So the info was reliable and more medical than ideological. They told us to use condoms basically and were really about gender roles, like the dad can take care of the baby instead of mom, you can even leave him the milk or use this artificial milk.

 

Where I am from you have sex ed from the age you are 11 until 18, you learn everything you need to know about every single possible birth control or ways to protect yourself as well as every STDS you might catch and how they work.

Every single year we were made to seat and listen about sex ed, it was never ever about abstinence it was always coming from the point that we would have sex or were already having it and so it was better we were prepared.

It got a little old after a few years but it also demystified lots of things and stop lots of others from being taboo. My friends and I are very health conscious and often go get tested together as a result, we openly talk about potential STDS and know so much about them that we don't feel they would ever be a deal breaker for any of us.

 

I was taught the sexless version, just how your bodies work, in the fifth
grade and then sometime again (I think) in middle school.

In high school, depending if you took health in your sophomore
year or freshman year, you would be taught the "all of the above" version.
My teacher told us everything about it, from all the types of different
types of birth controls to even showing us short story videos about
girls who suffered from a problem related to sex and how to solve them.
It wasn't just a "sit down and listen" we had to take notes and then when
the finals came around last year, we were quizzed on that subject, too.

 

Mine was at 15 and at 16 again and I think it was an alright age. Some people were starting to have sex at those ages but not earlier. And no, nobody got pregnant before graduating high school that I know about.

It was also about how it's okay to have different kinds of preferences about anything, and that it's not wrong if something beyond inserting a penis into a vagina interests you sexually. There was nothing about being gay or trans specifically. Maybe luckily, because people like me could feel judged. I felt embarassed enough when crossdressing was briefly mentioned and was one of those things that you shouldn't blame yourself for and that it's something people do to express themselves or maybe to get aroused and it's normal. The sex ed wasn't about being gay at any point but it wasn't exactly about being straight either.

 

The school I went to from Kindergarten through 8th grade had a strict policy of never teaching sex ed so I didn’t get a formal sexual education until I was a freshman in high school. By then I already knew everything thanks to my mom’s old college textbooks. In 8th grade we had a unit on HIV/AIDS including how it’s spread and how to protect yourself because that curriculum is required by state law.

I think parents need to get over their squeamishness and not rely on the school to teach their kids about sex. Sex education is technically supposed to begin at birth and parents should give age-appropriate information at every stage. As horrible as it sounds to some parents, even toddlers should know that boys ave a penis and girls have a vagina. More importantly parents need to educate their children about sexual abuse, and that if someone tries to touch them there that they should run away and tell an adult.

And most importantly parents should respect the sexual developmental milestones that children pass through, like not freaking out when their kids play doctor.

 

We got an initial talk in like 4th or 5th grade where the guys were in one room and girls were in another. It was mostly about like body odor and bodies changing. Since like every teacher at my school was female, it was the principal who talked with us.

We then had a health class sometime in middle school, I forgot what grade or if it was multiple grades. It was health, though, and not specifically sex ed AND it alternated with gym so we briefly talked about some sex ed stuff but it wasn't a major topic.

In 9th grade we had our actual sex ed class. However, it was also mixed with gym so out of four quarters in the year, I think our sex ed was one quarter and gym was the other three. More the most part it was informative, we learned about STDs and contraceptives and what not. There was a very pregnant girl in our class so it did get somewhat awkward at points. The big thing I remember is that everyone had to create presentations on a specific type of contraception and parents got super worked up and contacted the school and that got shut down because apparently parents didn't like 14-15 year olds shouldn't learn how to have safe sex.

 

Our society is still very puritanical when it comes to questions of sex and nudity. I can only imagine the reaction of parents if their children were given a frank sex talk in Middle School. They would launch protests over what they would regard as both improper and obscene. Europeans appear to have less hangups. It's a pity that so many parents act as if are still in the Victorian Age.

 

In my honest opinion, i think it should be somewhere in the range of 13-15 because at that age the kids are at least somewhat mature. It started for me in grade 4 (i think i was around 8-9 at the time) and no one took it seriously, all the class did was ew and make jokes and the teacher eventually even gave up. anyways, even at a older age when it came back up, the teacher was terrible at teaching it and seemed like he hated his job. it needs to be at a semi-mature age and with a qualified teacher, otherwise it is going to get nowhere. I hear the sex ed is even worse in america though.

 

I think sex education should be ongoing throughout life by parents, but so many parents shy away from the discussion and leave it to the schools. There again, I think it should start in the first year of school and vary it by age level. So young children are learning parts of body, safe touch, bad touch, who to tell. As they get older, more information at age-appropriate levels. I think adults over simplify things and believe their children don't know or do as much as they really do. I work with kids ages 10-15 and I can tell you some of the 10 yo know just as much or more as the older kids and all of them have a lot of false information they were told from friends or online. That shouldn't be happening. And yes, I am one of those that think they should be shown how to put the condom on and the 'life expectancy' of a condom. Children should be getting correct information because they are in the learning years and absorb everything. So if a friend says something that is incorrect, it is hard as hell to correct their thought process after-the-fact. It still amazes me how many grown women don't know how their parts work or where they really urinate from. In this day and age, sex education should not be taboo.

 

I think there should be one at every level of education. a 5th grade basic one for elementary school even though nobody is having sex yet so it'll be implanted in their minds at least, again in 7th grade for middle school with more detail when the kids can understand more and very few of them might be having sex too, 9th grade for high school in full detail because they're old enough to understand everything then and probably like half are having or about to have sex soon.

I also believe there should be a required college general educational class about health/life skills/financial knowledge etc. where sex ed and std stuff in as much detail as possible should be in the health section. It's kind of dumb when you think about it that colleges require mostly useless classes like humanities be taught to every student but don't include a required class about skills applicable to daily life. No one should be able to have a college degree which makes them an "educated citizen" without knowing basic financial/health/"what should you do in these various emergency situations" type of knowledge - it's part of being a responsible well-rounded citizen which is supposedly the whole point of a liberal arts education, and would help lower bad decision making like people taking out insanely high student loans because they don't understand how a loan works or doing unhealthy things not realizing it'll make them sick.

 

Echoing previous comments, I think sex and relationship education should begin at the earliest opportunity and certainly before the age of 11. I think primary/elementary school children should be aware of opposite sex and same sex relationships from the very first year, introducing more and more themes every year thereafter.

Education needs to address the full range of issues, including things like power, control and consent and it should be mandatory, with no opt outs on religious grounds.

 

We covered it in health class when I was about 15. My teacher was great, but due to Texas public education laws requiring an emphasis on abstinence, that's all I remember.

 

We got shown videos at ages 17-18 about abstinence. A horrifying video entitled Abortion:The Silent Scream which showed a late term abortion on an ultrasound and another one with a woman listing all the various STDs you could get. It was so bad a friend of mine worried she could be pregnant when good sex Ed would have told her she couldn’t be. I think that if the people who make up these classes actually talked to kids today they would learn that teaching abstinence isn’t realistic. Teaching how to protect themselves from pregnancy and other consequences would be way more useful. In today’s society lessons as young as 13-14 would be a good age to start.

 

Same as what a lot of other people are describing. We had a vanilla, sexless talk in the 5th grade that described how the body worked. Then there was health class we took when we were 12 or 13 that had a chapter dedicated to sex where they talked about pregnancy, std's, and contraceptives. The unfortunate thing being they only covered (essentially) heterosexual penetrative sex. Nothing was discussed about the safety around other forms of sex. I guess it was better than nothing. The irony is, during that time, my church tried to emphasize abstinence to the teens and the pregnancy rate actually went way, way up compared to when they just didn't bother to talk about it at all. lol

 

I'm 43, so back in the dark ages at about age 11, we watched a film about a couple trying for a baby. It was basically a film from what I remember with diagrams...it failed as an educational tool....

Nothing about masturbation, taught myself!!

Don't remember it mentionsing STIs....!!??

Nothing about sexuality, what so ever....even though aids was huge, and some gay people were dying, just awful...

Nothing about gay love.

Just awful...

In the UK they are going to teach children younger and include information on gay/bisexual relationships....about time...

Jon

 

Sex education wasn't any better in the States when I was young. In 8th grade a vague school talk about sex in the most general terms. In high school we had to take health class (given by the coach) and there was one single session about sex. Nothing about oral or anal sex.I don't even remember a mention of condoms. Forget about gay sex-that was taboo. Only a brief mention about STD's. Thank goodness times have changed. From what I've heard, there is a much more thorough discussion in schools today.