From the age of four to my high school graduation, I attended classes in a relatively small, public school district on Long Island. Many of my teachers fit the same demographic in terms of politics and religion -- democratic and Catholic. Unlike many private, predominately Catholic schools, however, my public school didn’t usually let personal beliefs cloud their teaching.
There was one topic that did get censored frequently, whether based on beliefs or personal discomfort.
No one ever talked about sex.
I consider myself lucky compared to many of my college friends that went to private, Catholic schools -- they didn’t receive any sexual education, and if they did, in a lot of cases, abstinence was the only option discussed.
My school introduced the topic of sex and puberty in the fifth grade. During one of the last weeks of school, my teacher rolled out the television and plugged in the VCR to play “the movie.” That’s what we referred to it as. In fifth grade, puberty and sex were foreign concepts, so naturally talking about these topics caused discomfort.
At this age, we were still writing notes to our crushes that said, “Do you like me? Check ‘yes’ or ‘no.’” We didn’t understand what anatomical differences meant.
Teachers separated the boys and girls into different classrooms because each movie dealt specifically with females or males, but not both. Further confusion ensued.
Fast forward four years later and boys and girls sat in front, next to and behind one another as an awkward gym teacher passed out diagrams of both sex organs with fill-in-the-blank labels. The teacher warned us about STD’s and practicing safe sex as students giggled, trying to hide individual discomfort.
And that was it. The instructional film and one health class attempted to educate students about sex. Any further questions or information would be googled and deleted from our parents’ computer history or read about in the sex Q&A portion of Cosmopolitan magazine in an aisle of the grocery store.
But teachers never prepared students for the most important, most embarrassing questions.
Teachers did not discuss emotional effects, how to properly diagnose any kind of health problem, the difference between coercion and consent, who to reach out to with further questions or anything relating to the LGBTQ+ community.
Sex was a hush-hush topic and a special moment to be shared “when you’re older” between a man and a woman.
At this point, high school students awkwardly and naively engaged in sexual activity or refrained completely, unsure of what it was or how to go about doing it.
Three or four years later, students sat at college orientation and learned about rape. Many learned what consent is, the difference between ‘yes’ and ‘no’ and how to try and prevent assault from happening.
And that was it. Students now had a rough idea of what sex should be and that it could quickly turn into a crime.
Still, no other questions had been answered. Many students started turning to one another, asking the most awkward and embarrassing questions to their roommates or to someone that had sexual experience.
This set a standard for sex. It either had to be exactly like what teachers taught in high school, or it had to be similar to a roommate’s experience. And if it wasn’t? Well, maybe you were “doing it wrong.”
Many may argue that parents have more of a responsibility to teach their kids about sex. However, many kids at a high school age typically don't want to hear advice from their parents. As a health teacher in a position of authority, information may be taken more seriously.
From a young age, teachers need to educate students about sex. Informing high school students about different forms of birth control, various options if pregnancy occurs and the emotional reactions that could occur may be uncomfortable. However, discomfort beats throwing uniformed students into what has become a hook-up culture and hoping they remember that one speech about how to use a condom.
