CONTENT WARNING: STRONG LANGUAGE, SEXUALITY
While we were the nicest seven or eight high school geeks I have ever known, we almost never had dates and almost never got in um, 'family trouble' (unless you count Bob getting his GF pg during High School, SR yr.) Worst, most tragic part? I received his son's - yes, his first-born's - obituary last year. Bob's first child - a boy - died in a motorcycle wreck - drunk had hit him. Young Robert had no chance, and was in no way at fault. One other guy in my class got his GF pg, but he finished school and graduated on time, unlike Bob, who had to finish his last semester taking his last semester "as by proxy"; I can' remember if he was at the graduation ceremony or not.
Anyway. There are a couple of STDs that I know of there, but very little else. My graduating class was 74 people, and I think I could count on..... hmmm..... one hand, the number of substance abusers in my grade. The classes behind us and above us were notorious, but we were the 'angels,' (heh! - not I...I was a bully and mean as spit - but I could talk my way out of *anything* - not a good thing, mind you, but that's what I did and how I coped with my IRL life, which was pretty crap). No pushers in our class, and *very* few takers. The ones who weren't angels were so horrid that they received permanent suspension / expulsion - had to do the rest of their schooling by correspondence or in a private school.
But a really good thing about the sex ed classes as we knew them was that you saw the results of the clear intellectual debate and understanding play out in a real environment. You could be sure to find used condoms in the grass behind the school during recess (eeeeew!) Dozens of them, and on particularly good days (usually Mondays) we could find even more in the bounding square of the football stands / bleachers all the way to the train tracks, to the West end of the playgrounds and original school wing. The school itself made up the fourth part of the square. Not too many up by the school (but dang! we found hundreds of them under the Merry-Go-Round... Centrifugal force must have done something really special with that Unforgettable Feeling, yanno? ::snerk:: ANYWAY the effect boundary of the area in which we were most likely to find the condoms in the mid 80s was nearly a square mile. One day (a bunch of us, having nothing better to do, and fascinated by the increasing conservatism in our country as evidenced by tightening of some of the abortion laws. Heh. I think the real story was that we were ALL geeks who couldn't get laid so we had to find a way to talk about sex and statistics ALL THE TIME. Except Bob. The rest of us were all talk and no action. Bob saw battle and was awarded the Purple Heart. LOL) Anyway, true to the Geek Code of Ethics and Responsibilities (I just made that up) we decided to run a simple test over the course of the football season. Easy. Besides we had the newest, most expensive, state of the art graphing calculators for 1985 or so (whooeeee!) and wanted to figure out all sorts of spatial statistics, by plugging in formulae and numbers. Funny I am coming full-circle to that now, again.
We measured *every* Saturday morning over the same area to see how many condoms were in the total area, then quick-counted them to make sure we hadn't missed any, then pulled down our search grids - we used the reusable grids (just very large sections of PVC pipe glued permanently together in the shape of a square, with four small projecting feet - easy to clean. Harder to find places to store. We prevailed on the maintenance crew for the school to put them in their garage) just to keep us in line in such a way that we didn't overlap or deviate too far off-course. There were enough AWAY games to give us a fairly decent baseline (though it seemed as though *some* folks went at it *every* chance they could in the grass!), and the results we came up with that some 73.001% of the total dataset (all the condoms we collected) were collected the day after a home game. (Can't remember the exact number, but it was around that - might even be as high as 83%, collected to three decimal points). Fascinating outcome.
Out of these results we came up with some conclusions. I am putting them in first person since I was involved - and because it is just easier that way: I think it helps to give kids the CHOICE of birth control and educate them fully. None of this abstinence BS. Teach them a wide range of information. Teach them about their bodies, and those bodies they will be encountering. Teach about relationship building. Talk about how to turn someone on without even touching them. Talk about the little things that make relationships work. Talk about issues of sexuality and aging. There's more... but that's a good start.
Back to sex ed in the 80s: We also talked about masturbation and mutual masturbation... and tastes, and sounds, and feelings (both those that can be hurt, thoughts that do hurt, and another unique one - actions - paying attention? light stroking? Kind words? etc. )
Mr S went around the room and had *every* student say the same five words, separated by gender. Women were required to speak up when they said the following: penis, head, testicles, anus and nipples - and she had to point these out on an anatomically-correct torso. I remember one particular student (a cheerleader, no less!) who was petrified... Dr. S said, "You know, if it came down to it, we could break Mr Torso in half and you could find the prostate gland for me..." She found the other five much more appealing and pointed them out with the eraser on her pencil. The guys? They got: Labia majora, clitoris, vagina, anus, nipples. One of the basketball players fainted when he realized what HE was going to have to say and point out. Didn't help him one bit. He ended being required to do both the men's and the women's anatomical parts. ROFL.
The few and far between movies we saw on sex ed (these were the early and mid 80s, remember) were HORRIBLE. They were either public domain crap that was put out by the Medical and Interpretive Dance Department of the College of Timbuktu back in oh... 1922. OR They were short training films filled with angst and repression and DADDY WITH A PIPE (damn phallic symbol) from the 1950s. OR They were from the late 1960s and featured really weird cartoon or claymation characters sporting constant boners that were larger than they were, going around fucking everything in site.. then they get condoms and women get the Pill and while they are having sex just as much as before they are controlling their family size and spacing their children deliberately. REALLY FREAKING WEIRD. I mean... they looked like tiny Smurfs with immense penises which reached well above the tops of their heads. I don't even think they could reach the glans to CLEAN IT ::shaking head:: Don't know if that one was a sex ed film, or an encyclical against doing drugs. And they showed this to vulnerable, impressionable young kids who were still under the age of consent!! ::snort:: Yeah. Whatever.
What actually bothered me about these movies (AND EVEN FILMSTRIPS!!) was that they were very prejudiced against women's abilities to make good decisions for themselves. Doctor knows best ::pat pat pat on the head:: Just as telling, though, was the implication by omission that men and women of color were still not a part of our culture. Makes me ill... I mean, I feel horribly sick. Ill conceived and *very much* ill-advised.
But we learned. We learned about our health - and the diseases and disease symptoms that could invade our body. How to look out for them. Standard treatments. How to look up for more information. HOW TO USE THE FREAKING PDR. How to read a basic drug guide, a signs and symptoms guide with flowcharts, and what to look for in a *basic* insurance policy. And we were expected, as part of our homework, to come up with a question of the week. He answered them ALL, and assigned the best ones as as another part of our weekend homework. We had projects, we had papers. Needless to say, we worked hard and learned an exquisite and extraordinary amount in a semester. Yeah. A semester. Mr. S worked us like DAWGS. But you know what? I don't think I have ever learned so well as I did in his classes (the other class was driver's ed... and he pushed me and pushed me hard to be the best driver I could be. I still hear his voice reminding me to check my blind spots, use my signal, etc.... very influential guy to me.)
Comprehensive Sex Ed should NOT be ignored in favor of Abstinence-Only Education. Yes, teach abstinence as one way of playing a role within society... but in the meantime, teach some things that are also simply realities for these kids - and for kids for generations and generations going back centuries and millennia. And teach them practical health care and coping skills - much of which I have outlined above. The life you save might be your own, if just from the information about health and life-skills.
Ahhh, long-winded, I am! Can you tell I am a historian who not only cannot sleep but is now also hopelessly behind and avoiding research and work?
I'm signing off to finish my SPSS/stats homework - will be up another hour or so. It's four in the morning and that gives me... Wait. WTF??? I thought it was just a little after two. HOLY SHIT. I'm taking a xanax and going to bed. @@
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