The Sorry State of Sex Education in the USA

When I was 22 or so, my mother noted reddened areas on the backs of my arms which I hesitantly explained were rug burns (the result of extensive fooling around in my girlfriend’s individual office) and looked at me and said “Joel, do you know how to get a girl pregnant?”

I said “Yes.”

She said “Don’t.”

And that was the entirety of my “birds and bees” lecture.

In my school system — in a college town located in a rural area — only female students got sex ed. Males did not. My mother, in fact, paid for my sisters to take a private sex ed course offered through an external organization, probably because what little the school system proper offered was hopelessly out of date. My school health textbooks had been published during the Eisenhower administration and we were using them in 1983.

And even with such a minimal exposure to biological reproductive concepts, I was probably still better off than most students who are home schooled or who attend school in states whose education systems are controlled by the local theocracy. In many cases, what is taught is blatantly wrong (“Birth control causes cancer”, and so on).

Did you know that only 18 states actually require sex ed to be medically accurate?

https://www.guttmacher.org/state-policy/explore/sex-and-hiv-education

From time to time I find myself thinking how grateful I am that Carole and I don’t have children. We are rapidly heading toward the world depicted in Idiocracy.