The stoopyd! Eet berrnz! (sex ed in Utah)

[PBrooke]

A lot of (not fundie) parents just focus on getting their kids through high school without having sex. I can sort of appreciate the sentiment, I guess - in theory the decision-making part of your brain is better developed later - but the problem is, if you don't get that information when you're younger, it's not going to magically fill in later. I knew a girl in college who had sex with her boyfriend for the first time, unprotected. I asked her if they at least discussed it - maybe he assumed she was on the Pill at least - but she said that would have been too embarrassing! Girl, when you make the decision to put someone inside you embarrassment should go out the window!

[Jessica]

I don't know why the US doesn't look to countries like the Netherlands.

Because they're all a bunch of dirty stoners and if you like Europe then you can just pack your bags and leave becase this is AMERICA, dag nabbit. Well, that's what I get out of the conversations between certain family members.

[freejoytoo]

The thing is, the sex drive is pretty primal and it's also a basic human need. It's not like they're telling teenagers to do something they can just decide intellectually, if that makes sense. Obviously you shouldn't make any decisions without thinking it through but they don't seem to get that teenagers are a) filled with hormones and b) very likely to get carried away, even if before that they've said they don't want to do anything until after high school. It's better to give them the information so that should they need it they're not looking at a pregnancy test or contracting an STI.

I don't think there's anything wrong with teenagers having sex, provided that they're of the age of consent. If you're over sixteen and want to have sex, why shouldn't you, provided you know about the risks and the consequences? Again, in European countries sex ed is provided very early on and teenagers are encouraged to carry condoms. The result? There is a very low pregnancy rate and most teenagers don't lose their virginity until after the age of sixteen. I knew how to protect myself sexually from the age of about twelve and I didn't have sex until I was 21.

[alphaeta08]

Wtf? And this was in a PUBLIC school? Your sex ed sounds misinformed and extremely misogynist - I assume guys didn't have the hearts talk.

Sounds like they were trying to repress you. My school might have had its pitfalls but there was no 'have sex and DIE' talk, and certainly no ripping up of paper hearts! Although maybe that was to do with our teachers telling us how they had enjoyed casual sex prior to marriage :lol:

Oh no, boys and girls were together the whole time, but a girl gave the talk! This was pretty typical for my state, since we were (and I assume still are) abstinence-only. At least it didn't last the whole year, because it got really boring! I swear I have like three purity pledges scattered throughout my room at home, all in handy miniature form so we could put them on our keychains! :lol:

[O Latin]

We had abstinence only sex ed, too, but without even a hint of religion, that I recall. We mostly heard about how having sex will give you STDs and if you wait until marriage, you won't have to worry about that. That was pretty much it. I think there may have been some discussion about teenagers not being emotionally ready for sex, but I can't remember for sure.

Pardon any riffles. I'm on my iPad.

[freejoytoo]

Oh no, boys and girls were together the whole time, but a girl gave the talk! This was pretty typical for my state, since we were (and I assume still are) abstinence-only. At least it didn't last the whole year, because it got really boring! I swear I have like three purity pledges scattered throughout my room at home, all in handy miniature form so we could put them on our keychains! :lol:

I remember watching a video about some Americans doing a purity pledge. We unanimously agreed they were crazy, and that included the girls who wanted to wait until marriage!

I just don't know how they're getting away with it, even without mentioning God. It's pretty obvious that that's where it's coming from.

[darareaksmey]

Heh. My 15.5-year-old son is getting sex ed for the next three weeks in his ROTC class (which he took in lieu of PE) in his ebil public school. I had to sign and send the paper back yesterday. When he handed it to me to sign, I said, "WHAT?!? Haven't you already had sex ed like three times already (4th grade, 5th grade and sometime in middle school)? You mean you don't have this business figured out yet?" He said, "Mom, I guess they want to make sure we do it right."

I don't think he is sexually active yet, but I don't know for sure. But at any rate, I am delighted to have both my kids get as much info as possible from authoritative sources (that would be me and DH or through the school.) Whenever I sign those permission papers, I wonder how many parents are going to check the block that says "NO, I do not grant permission. Send my kid to the guidance office while this stuff is being taught." I sure hope those kids are getting good info someplace, ut I rather doubt it.

[happy atheist]

I'm so glad our school district isn't this stupid. Sex ed here is quite comprehensive.

A few years ago when my sons were in elementary school they had the first sex ed units. They don't even separate the boys and girls anymore because they found that when they did that the boys and girls would just share the information on the playground anyway and they felt it would be better for everyone to get the facts firsthand.

The topic is revisited every year or 2 in health class.

I went to the same school district, back in the late 80s. I fondly remember my male gym/health teacher standing in front of the class with a soccer ball in each hand, with his arms outstretched to the sides, saying, "Imagine my body is the female reproductive system." Between his legs was the vagina. His arms were the fallopian tubes. The soccer balls were the ovaries. It made quite an impression.

[TinyDancer87]

But Wright countered that current safeguards aren’t enough. He pointed to a Planned Parenthood program that some schools have used to teach fifth- and sixth-graders about puberty, though the state school board pulled its approval of that program nearly a year ago after complaints.

:angry-cussing: What?! Why would you pull a program about basic biology? As if puberty, a process that is just as natural as breathing air, is something to be ashamed of! Teaching children about things that they are experiencing is a good thing. And these are things that don't have to even do with sex- boys voice dropping and acne. Why be ashamed of our bodies?

riffle

[FireIsCatching89]

They did all the "demonstrations" we talk about here, like making a heart out of paper and tearing it up, basically the "giving away pieces of your heart" concept. We didn't even really talk about STD's, or at least I don't remember it. They just threw a bunch of statistics at us, had us practice saying "no" in about 2859 different ways, and talked about how sex is AWESOME, but only if you're married. Then we signed the purity pledges. The funniest part was the anonymous Q&A, because we all felt too guilty and embarrassed to ask real questions, plus the girl doing the talk was a virgin. Nice. :lol: So, technically no God, but same message.

Lollllzzzz, we had something similar at my middle school. The admin brought in an abstinence speaker (who was also a nurse at the local pediatrics hospital, as I recall) when I was in seventh grade because there were like, three pregnancies in as many months in the eighth grade. It was separated into boys and girls sections, not co-ed, tho. We were told we didn't need to have sex to feel special to someone because we already were special (the speaker refered to herself in the third person the whole time and said, at least five times during the talk that "Dorothy thinks you're special!"), and that women have emotional baggage that we need to contend with when we have sex, and having sex before marriage could make us depressed or something. Even at the age of thirteen I remember thinking that the whole thing was bullshit.

Then when I was in ninth grade, my geography teacher, on our last day of class, as her parting wisdom to us, read us a pamphlet entitled "24 reasons to wait until marriage to have sex," some of the reasons being that abortions cause cervical cancer, condoms fail a lot, purity is awesome, etc. etc.. She was also the head cheerleading coach, and often referenced Christian talk radio as a reputable source, so my mom gave her the nickname of the "Rah-Rah Republican." I told my mom this, and she was LIVID and mentioned wanting to report the teacher, but I don't think she ever did. Oh, the memories...

And my health textbook mentioned condoms only once (no other forms of contraception), and that was in reference to their failure rates, which I think were inaccurate.

Thank God for the Planned Parenthood Teen website, or else I'd never have learned anything!

[freejoytoo]

We had a cartoon in one of our textbooks about a girl worried she's knocked up and her friend telling her how to have a backstreet abortion, and then her going to a doctor and the doctor clearing up the facts. There was a picture of all the kinds of contraception at the end. It was very eighties!

I must have had very immoral teachers. They enjoyed telling us stories of their sexual escapes prior to marriage!

[alphaeta08]

Lollllzzzz, we had something similar at my middle school. The admin brought in an abstinence speaker (who was also a nurse at the local pediatrics hospital, as I recall) when I was in seventh grade because there were like, three pregnancies in as many months in the eighth grade. It was separated into boys and girls sections, not co-ed, tho. We were told we didn't need to have sex to feel special to someone because we already were special (the speaker refered to herself in the third person the whole time and said, at least five times during the talk that "Dorothy thinks you're special!"), and that women have emotional baggage that we need to contend with when we have sex, and having sex before marriage could make us depressed or something. Even at the age of thirteen I remember thinking that the whole thing was bullshit.

Then when I was in ninth grade, my geography teacher, on our last day of class, as her parting wisdom to us, read us a pamphlet entitled "24 reasons to wait until marriage to have sex," some of the reasons being that abortions cause cervical cancer, condoms fail a lot, purity is awesome, etc. etc.. She was also the head cheerleading coach, and often referenced Christian talk radio as a reputable source, so my mom gave her the nickname of the "Rah-Rah Republican." I told my mom this, and she was LIVID and mentioned wanting to report the teacher, but I don't think she ever did. Oh, the memories...

And my health textbook mentioned condoms only once (no other forms of contraception), and that was in reference to their failure rates, which I think were inaccurate.

Thank God for the Planned Parenthood Teen website, or else I'd never have learned anything!

AAHH, I can relate to every single thing here! When I say they weren't allowed to talk about condoms, they may have mentioned failure rates once. NOW I remember, the "emotional baggage" lesson! And oh yeah, the "true stories" about how so-and-so got really depressed because she had sex! :lol: And yes, thank God for the Internet and Talk Sex late at night on Oxygen or I wouldn't know anything!

[Kitty]

I'm 20 years old, so I was in 7th, 8th, and 9th grades when North Carolina's sex ed policy was "DON'T DO IT OR YOU WILL GO TO HELL DIE GET AIDS AND GIVE BIRTH TO A BLIND BABY (yes, in that order)" Within ONE YEAR of switching to a comprehensive sex ed policy, NC dropped from 9th in the nation for teen pregnancies, to 14th. One fucking year made that much difference. Of course the year this changed was the year I entered college, so I know a LOT of girls who were pregnant and had kids in high school. I knew a girl who got pregnant at 13, right before this changed. She entered high school nearly 6 months pregnant. Just about all the girls I graduated with have kids or are pregnant. If they're not, they're married, because marriage is considered to be the next "base" after sex (to use that stupid baseball metaphor).

It boggles my mind, especially since I grew up in a county with a whopping total of 2 clinics and one pharmacy. Most people go to Virginia for health care, which is at least a 30 minute drive (up to 45 minutes for some, if they don't just go to the Outer Banks). So of course most of these girls are facing problems with their parents in getting any sort of birth control (Planned Parenthood is a good 1 hour away, of course in Virginia), even condoms which are only available off-the-shelf at the two Food Lions (and those shelves are so high up most people can't reach them, let alone *see* them), but then word travels fast across the county and nobody can buy condoms anywhere-- so they have to go to Virginia where nobody knows them or can tell anyone else. Then if they want abortions, they're entirely at the mercy of their parents. This is assuming they can't drive, but even if they can drive they have limited access to any sort of sexual health care. I'm not even going to go into STD care. Let me just say that the one tanning salon in my town is a place you hope cleans the beds very, very, VERY well. Because of how appalling the health care situation is in Hometown.

And I'm not even going to go into that 16 year old girl who stabbed her newborn daughter last summer. Because I have a feeling that wouldn't have happened if she had a decent sex education, if her parents had paid any fucking attention to her (the mother had no fucking clue she was pregnant, yet the entire school did. WTF, stupid cunt) and if she'd had any way to access health care on her own. I'd much rather she'd had an abortion than stabbed that poor, helpless baby.

God I can't stand these fucking morons who really think "don't do it" is an acceptable approach to teen sex. It didn't do SHIT in North Carolina, it hasn't done shit in any other abstinence-only state, and do you know who's going to pay for all of the unintended pregnancies and unwanted children people can't afford to feed and clothe? that's right, TAXPAYERS.

[/rant]

I also read a report somewhere (CDC?) that a lot of teenage girls think they CAN'T get pregnant for some stupid reason or another. Like, being obese, underweight, having ovarian cysts, having endometriosis, but of course in rural wastelands like the one I grew up in, few girls actually know for sure if they have cysts or endo, because those conditions tend to be self-diagnosed because guess what? Mommy and Daddy won't take their daughters to the fucking doctor just over bad periods, because she'll be put on the pill and then they can't trust her.

[Kitty]

They did all the "demonstrations" we talk about here, like making a heart out of paper and tearing it up, basically the "giving away pieces of your heart" concept. We didn't even really talk about STD's, or at least I don't remember it. They just threw a bunch of statistics at us, had us practice saying "no" in about 2859 different ways, and talked about how sex is AWESOME, but only if you're married. Then we signed the purity pledges. The funniest part was the anonymous Q&A, because we all felt too guilty and embarrassed to ask real questions, plus the girl doing the talk was a virgin. Nice. :lol: So, technically no God, but same message.

^This is exactly what I was taught, only the teachers of the sex ed class were more than happy to tell us all about STDs. In 7th grade they didn't even mention condoms, in 8th grade they gave out some bullshit statistic about them failing. And I got the "girls give sex to get love, boys give love to get sex" sexist BULLSHIT. Not empowering at all, and I was disgusted. Even at 13 I was biting back the urge to yell "THIS IS ALL STUPID SEXIST BULLSHIT WHAT THE FUCK." I regret being so shy in middle school.

[2xx1xy1JD]

Having a public school do purity pledges is beyond crazy.

Here's the thing: Once upon a time, I was a teen. I wasn't a bad kid, but like most teenagers, I had a bit of snark and attitude. When we got the "Just Say No" drug talks and the embarrassed VP telling us to wait for marriage, we rolled our eyes and laughed them off as idiots. I can't think of any teen that would suddenly conquer hormones and peer pressure just by having a teacher tell them to wait for marriage. Do these kids always listen to "do your homework" or "no running in the halls"? I also remember thinking, "how exactly does a wedding ring serve as a substitute for a condom, because you are still sleeping with everyone that your husband has slept with and can still die of AIDS if he cheats on you".

Now, I was lucky enough to have friends who took the full sex ed course, plus I listened to Sex With Sue on the radio every week. That show was awesome! Instead of a corny moral message, she was VERY explicit about exactly how you could get pregnant, how birth control worked, how various birth control methods could fail, how HIV was transmitted, how other STDs were transmitted, symptoms of STDs, how to prevent the transmission of various STDs, relative risks of all forms of sexual activity, suggestions for lower-risk activities, etc. It was cool, it was real, and it had me scared shitless of getting pregnant or getting a disease. Keep in mind that I started having sex 23 years ago, at a time when the message everywhere was "have sex and DIE" because of AIDS.

I'd compare comprehensive sex ed to drinking and driving campaigns. I don't think that they really encourage people to drink, but they definitely encouraged people to think through the decision to drink and to plan proactively to have a way of getting home safely. Not doing so was no longer excused as just getting carried away - the message was everywhere and people who still drove drunk were seen as dangerous criminals.

I'd also compare it to fire safety. Sure, I teach my kids not to play with matches...but I also teach them how to escape a house fire and keep a fire extinguisher around. Disobeying me shouldn't result in death.

[emmiedahl]

I just asked my 16 year old son and he has had no sex ed in school whatsoever. No "how your body will be changing", no abstinence only, nothing. There is a health elective in 9th grade that he thinks counts toward biology/life science credit, but he took biology that year.

He has had excellent sex ed, if I do say so myself. I buy my kids books on puberty, anatomy coloring books, and collect birth control brochures. I also keep condoms and morning after pills in the house. I offered to take his girlfriend to PP but her church protests there. But none of this came from the school and a LOT of his friends are very confused about what can be used as birth control, just judging from stories I hear.

[Bookworm89]

When I lived in BC there was a health class where they demonstrated the use of condoms on a banana and informed us about all the different birth control methods...however this was in the 10th grade when most of us new from other sources the information presented. There was separate talks in the 7th grade about puberty but they only did 1 of the 3 classes because we "didn't respond appropriately†meaning we laughed at what they were trying to tell us and they didn’t want to have to do the other two sessions.

However, when I moved to Texas my 11th grade year, the only thing I heard talked about was abstinence this and that. Didn’t seem to work as the city had one of the highest teen pregnancy rates in the state (and the country…scary). When I graduated the running joke among the students was “whose water is going to break as they walk across the stage†that along speaks for how well the health classes went in the school.

[tropaka]

We did the condom on the banana demo - back in 1988 (rural Ontario, Canada). Kids need to be given facts in a non judgemental format.

[MollySee]

I just asked my 16 year old son and he has had no sex ed in school whatsoever. No "how your body will be changing", no abstinence only, nothing. There is a health elective in 9th grade that he thinks counts toward biology/life science credit, but he took biology that year.

He has had excellent sex ed, if I do say so myself. I buy my kids books on puberty, anatomy coloring books, and collect birth control brochures. I also keep condoms and morning after pills in the house. I offered to take his girlfriend to PP but her church protests there. But none of this came from the school and a LOT of his friends are very confused about what can be used as birth control, just judging from stories I hear.

Thank you for being open about sex with your kiddos! My mom once got me the morning after pill when I made a not so smart decision. Knowing that I could go to her for something like that made me feel SO MUCH BETTER about it. I haven't made that mistake again since.

I just can't tell you how good it feels to know that your parents trust you to be well educated about this kind of stuff. It made me less likely to do dumb things and I didn't feel like I needed to rebel.

[Kelya]

We had the puberty video in 5th, 6th and 7th grade. In 8th grade we took care of egg babies. The milkman brought the egg babies- sex was never mentioned. Then 9th-11th grade involved extensive lectures on eating disorders, domestic abuse, and smoking, as many people popped out babies and engaged in unsafe sex practices. At one point I remember this student named Courtney being like "when are we going to learn about sex?" and instead of making fun of her since she was well liked, people were asking the teacher and finally it came out that they were "revamping the curriculum." So yeah, no sex in schools. Smoking is bad, domestic abuse is bad, don't have an eating disorder, babies crack easily=my health education.

[DarkAnts]

My 8th grade sex ed class back in 1998 consisted of us talking about what to do on our dates besides "petting". We also had to make stupid posters that said things like "Pet your dog not your date." There was no mention about what sex was or how to protect yourself. I had fun making my teacher uncomfortable by asking all sorts of questions about sex and protection options :twisted: . I even got sent to the principles office one day. I told the principle that the class was suppose to be sexual education not how to date a person according to the mormon church. I got a talking to but did not get detention. I was excluded from sex education after that.

I went to a catholic high school. We got more information about sex and protection. It was slanted to convince you abstain from sex until marriage but it still gave us all of the info we needed to make informed decisions.

[Dinaberries]

I just asked my 16 year old son and he has had no sex ed in school whatsoever. No "how your body will be changing", no abstinence only, nothing. There is a health elective in 9th grade that he thinks counts toward biology/life science credit, but he took biology that year.

He has had excellent sex ed, if I do say so myself. I buy my kids books on puberty, anatomy coloring books, and collect birth control brochures. I also keep condoms and morning after pills in the house. I offered to take his girlfriend to PP but her church protests there. But none of this came from the school and a LOT of his friends are very confused about what can be used as birth control, just judging from stories I hear.

You sound like a great mom! It's sounds like you're there for his girlfriend too, and that's amazing. It sounds like she doesn't get that kind of support from her parents, so good on you for providing that! That's how I want to be when my son is in his teens. I don't know if I can really trust any school to give my son comprehensive sex ed, and I want to be there to provide him with any additional information/access to contraception and answer any questions he might have. I definitely think that comprehensive sex ed needs to be a part of school curriculum (starting in grade school), since so many parents fail their kids in this area, but I also think that it is ideal for easy access to information about sexual health should be provided in the home as well.

I will never understand the people who advocate abstinence-only education. Don't they remember being teenagers??

[IceQueen]

I signed a Purity Pledge AND got a RING at my public middle school in 8th grade. I also learned that you can always get pregnant no matter what protection you use bc you will always be doing it wrong, everyone will hate you once you have the baby, you will get AIDS, and if you get an abortion you will be killing a living breathing human. We did learn about different contraceptives, but they don't work anyway so why bother was my schools attitude.

[AudreyE]

See, I wouldn't call the sex I had before marriage "devastating." Sometimes it was bad. Sometimes it was boring. It was frequently awkward, and it could certainly complicate relationships.

Now, getting pregnant... THAT would have been devastating.

And, yes, of course, young women can still get pregnant after being taught about birth control. That doesn't mean they shouldn't be taught.

[alphaeta08]

Now, I was lucky enough to have friends who took the full sex ed course, plus I listened to Sex With Sue on the radio every week. That show was awesome!

Just wanted to give more props to that show, because like I said before, without her I'd know a lot less about sex. I watched her TV show late on Sunday nights on Oxygen (after the made-for-TV versions of what appeared to be romance novels) secretly in my room. My favorite segment was when they'd rate different sex toys! I always wondered how those tests were carried out... :lol:

Oh, forgot to mention we also did the, "Going too far with a boy/girl is like putting a frog in boiling water. It feels good at first, but before you know it, you've burned to DEATH!!!"