Ask Lemmy

Catholic school in the UK in the early 00s - basically "here's what a condom is because the government says we have to show you, now wait till you're married and don't be gay"

Surprisingly comprehensive, considering I took health at a Kentucky high school back around 1994.

Me with zero knowledge of anything sexual down to even how to do sexual intercourse or the existence of oral sex, knowing what consent is, anything. No idea.

I was almost a teen and stumbled on an obscure sex forum. It wasn’t pornography, it was all informational. I started reading about stuff, it astounded me, it sounded like fiction. I learned how to masturbate correctly, I learned how to do sexual things, and I learned about consent. As a result, I waited until I was comfy with another person doing that stuff to me. I have never had a bad sexual experience, and I have had every partner tell me about how much they enjoy experiences with me.

I thank that forum for that. I’m very lucky I was taught by the best source I could imagine… and that I was curious enough to read and learn for a long while before actually doing stuff.

Maybe I had a good education? I feel like it equipped me properly to make sound decisions. Gave information of puberty, changes, hormones, STD/STI, protection, pregnancies.

In the moment, the class was just another class. Sure, it was funny (teehee weiner and boobs), but reflecting later in life, I made a few better decisions because of it.

I can't recall if it was on the second or third year of high school, but it was a single Biology class. The teacher was comfortable with it, but she was very clearly biased towards abstinence and insisted the only way to be 100% sure was to just not have sex.

Despite that, she still talked about basics of sex and genitalia, a few common STDs, and basic preventive measures, both for pregnancy and STDs - even if they weren't particularly effective. Both coitus interruptus and sodomy (we had a loooot of fun repeating that word for a week or so) were mentioned as ways to avoid pregnancy, but condoms and IUDs were the real recommendations.

As a class, we weren't too rowdy, though there was a kid or two that made a few too many jokes - and the teacher cut them off fairly quickly. I also recall she handled pamphlets with each of the methods talked during class and their approximate efficacy.

This was in 2005-ish and I'm Brazilian.

Also of note this was the second time, the first attempt happened in middle school (and in a different school altogether) and we had to do a presentation on STDs and the like. The teacher decided to cancel at the last minute because we were clearly too embarrassed to actually talk about the subject in front of our classmates.

I think of all the education that I missed, but then my homework was never quite like this....

Grade 6. Biology classes lasted about an hour or so, every day, for a week or two.

Boys and girls were broken into their own groups. I assume this was to help avoid being embarrassed about things in front of the opposite sex.

We were told if we made jokes or giggled, we failed for the day and had to sit in the hall. We nervously and embarrassingly giggled a bit the first day but after we got into it things were fine.

The classes were very straight forward. Dry. Matter of fact. Covered everything they needed to cover for basic biology, how sex works, body parts and what they do, etc, but didn't talk about things like birth control.

Over flowery words from my mother, as soon as I started asking.

My friend Lionel in grade school telling us that every time you thrust when you have sex that that's how many children you'll have.

According to Lionel I should have had a few million children by now.

standard 7th grade or so biology class stuff. 1990ish. A week or two of classes. that’s it.

Mine talked about various contraceptive methods, STDs, and accidental/teen pregnancies. It did focus more on the pregnancy part than the STD part, but they also briefly talked about how condoms are still important even if you're gay, since they prevent STDs.

I have a cousin I went to highschool with. He grew up in the south, but he finished highschool with me in Minnesota, and he told me his sex ed curriculum down south consisted of a brief talk on how sex is bad and that it is important to eat vegetables. Even though he had health class credits from down south, the school made him take their health class and he was happy to find out it's much more comprehensive than the south.

I remember in the 5th grade we were reproductive taught anatomy with black and white line drawings of adult genitalia and it literally didn't occur to me that it had anything to do with my body or anyone else's. The hairy spread beavers or the cross sections with lines referring to some squiggle as the vas deferens... It was about as meaningful as being in geography class trying to memorize the names of every island in the arctic.

With parental consent, we got the basic mechanics taught to us in grade 7. The very first thing was the teacher asked us what words we knew for genitalia (dick etc), wrote them all on the board, and then banned us from using them in the class. We were only to use the proper words.

Then in grade 10, without parental consent, we started getting weekly classes during our homeroom class. There were about five classes in total. It was conducted by someone from outside the school (from a group like planned parenthood I guess), but our teacher was present.

There were many discussions, different forms of contraception were introduced, and literally passed around for us to look at. The pill, dental dams, condoms, female condoms, (I'm probably forgetting some). We practiced putting condoms onto plastic bananas, and were all given one (some?) to take home.

There was an anonymous question box which the instructor answered. Sex for pleasure, including masturbation was discussed. I don't remember anything about LGBT as it was a different time then. After high school, though many classmates came out.

I do remember one of these lessons was about STDs, and the instructor was going to show those horrific pictures as others have described. But our (cool) teacher stopped them. Overall, it was a great experience for us.

8th grade and in bio class. Focus was on abstinence being the best way to precent STDs and stuff, and also using protection like condoms.

A boring waste of my summer vacation at the time

Religious school taught me nothing, but religious parents gave a surprisingly detailed and good explanation of sex, including mention of gay people. Then they got me a private tutor for biology so I would know the material to pass the exam.

Got gifted a biology encyclopedia left open on my table opened on the page about reproduction

A mysterious brown paper bag was tossed out of a car window aimed to land near me playing in the front yard...

Like god intended.

mostly just internet

parents are conservative and don't teach shit, not that I want to talk to them anyways

school teach it in terms of biology. Eggs, Sperms, that stuff, they don't teach you how to fuck, but I think they mentioned condoms a few times, but I doubt it was even that clear. I don't think they explicitly mentioned how sexual intetcourse is supposed to work.

internet is a wonderful thing, its just sad people these days use it for tik toks instead of reading Wikipedia.

Wikipedia is love, Wikipedia is life. (Yes I know to double check the stuff)

I did the practicum before the theory. It helped.

In Highschool I took health and it was the diagrams of the different junk, pictures and videos about STDs, saying most birth control doesn't actually work very well (e.g. Condoms have a 36% success rates at prevent STDs or pregnancy) so it's best to sign a card swearing you'll be abstinent until marriage. Only one person signed the card since we were, thankfully, given a choice. No talking about being gay, since it's a red state. They spent more time on a bunch of different drugs than sex.

Before high school there wasn't really "sex" ed, just showing videos about puberty and ways to check for cancer/lumps. But I went to a Catholic school before highschool. There also might have been stuff about how Masturbation is bad in the Catholics "sex ed".

I don't remember too much of it. Was probably grade 6 or 7. They split us up by boys/girls. The only thing that stuck is the teacher telling us that when people with penises sleep, their penis goes UP and DOWN and UP and DOWN and she very animatedly gestured this out.

To this day, I have never noticed anybody's penis rise and fall while they're asleep, but nobody really feels comfortable with me watching either ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

Watched videos with captain condom and penny penicillin

Soccer coach told us it would hurt to push a baby from his vagina then some boy behind me asked “you have a vagina?” Bad teacher and no one cared in middle school

I’m from the UK and in my 40s. I got shown a video about genitalia at primary school when I was about 10. Then we got taught it several times until we left school, often about masturbation or safe sex. All from a pretty serious educational kind of perspective, not demonising it or anything. Largely saying that masturbation is normal and that you should have sex safely. I remember some weird video where they talked about masturbating by twisting your penis rather than the usual motion.

A handy VHS tape that I spotted under the couch when lying on the floor after school.

Made a copy and put it back.

Still don't know which parent did it.