Sex Education

Okay so my experience with sex ed in grade school wasn't quite that ridiculous, but it might as well have been. I remember in grade five we had one day where a couple of public health nurses came into our class and talked to all of the girls about getting our first periods. They answered questions that we had, and I'm sure it gave us a vague picture of what to expect. However, seeing as the boys weren't with us, I was wondering where they were, and if they were learning the same stuff as us or if they got to go outside and play, because this was 'girl talk.' I think that splitting up the boys from the girls is a huge mistake. It's no wonder so many guys tend to shy away from period talk; as their teachers shied away from teaching it to them, ultimately teaching them then that it's not a normal process that should be talked about. They were taught that they don't have to learn about it, so it must be something that they don't need to know anything about. I think that maybe a better way to try teaching sexual education would be to keep all of the students together to learn, but then afterwards split into smaller groups (mixed gender or same gender) to ask more private questions.

Moving into junior high, the only memory I took away from the sex ed topic in Health class was a movie we watched. It was of a woman in labour, and my teacher found it necessary to pause the video at the part where the baby was coming out. I remember my one guy friend sitting behind me had his eyes closed for the whole movie, and opened them when he heard it stop, only to find this picture on the screen. He let out a disgusted noise and kept his eyes shut the rest of the class. I thought that watching that movie was entirely inappropriate, unnecessary and honestly just gross to a bunch of grade 9 students. I clearly was not the only person who was disgusted, and I think that this made us not want to learn anything else. I think that maybe my teacher just had no idea how to teach sex education, and as we discussed in class, the most common critique of sex educators is that they're under trained, and teachers can basically teach this topic in anyway they choose, without other teachers knowing or questioning what they do. Honestly, if I ever found myself teaching a sexual education course, I would definitely ask what other teachers have done. I would not show videos that just made my students feel sick and uncomfortable, and I would want to teach every student the same topics, including many of the topics we have discussed so far in FAM. I think that issues relating to puberty for males and females should be taught, different orientations of sexuality and even, like the video above talked about, abstinence or safe sex, but in a way that isn't just going to be made fun of.