sex ed in schools

[rynne]

Expect much spam from me tonight. I'm leaving at 5:30 (*cries at the earliness*) tomorrow morning to go to Colorado until Friday, and I'm not going to have the internet, so I will write lots of posts that will hopefully generate many comments for me to read when I get back. *snicker* And let's just wait for them all to be a flop...

Anyway. Something I've been wondering awhile, and a question especially for the Brits.

What is sex education like in Britain? For all the HP fics that mention it, half of them have it given in school, in one of the upper years, and the other half have parents give their kids The Talk. Which is more correct?

For that matter, I have no idea what it's like anywhere outside of Nevada. I, for one, have never had The Talk with my parents, where they explained to me how babies are made (*snerk*), but that's because Nevada (or maybe just my county, I don't remember) has (or had, I'm not sure if it still does because I've outgrown it now) the SHARE (Sexuality, Health, And Responsibility Education) program, where everyone, unless their parents signed a note excusing them, from fourth to eighth grade, and whichever year they took Health in high school, had a week every year in which someone from the program came and explained things about sex. They talked about STDs, and usually had someone with AIDS come in and talk about it. I was in fifth grade, and therefore ten, when I learned about inserting tab A into slot B, and so on. My parents didn't need to have a Talk with me, because the school was doing it for them.

Is something like this common in schools? I've never lived anywhere other than Nevada, but what's meant by The Talk is pretty much universal, which leads me to think that it's common (or has been at some point), and I am confused about how many people actually do have a Talk with their parents. And what age they usually are. Some fics depict Harry & co as clueless about most of it until their mid-teens, and I just have to go O.O at that, because I learned much earlier (before I even started puberty--the fourth grade lesson, when I was nine, was basically about that, and about the changes that our bodies would be undergoing, and so on).

And well, yeah. I'm curious. And I realize Hogwarts isn't a normal British school, but the students there are people and will eventually get really horny and want to have sex, but I'm pretty sure they have to know something about things like STDs and contraceptions and what have you.

Now I'm just rambling. :p Expect more rambling on a different subject later. And dude, I really have to answer some comments...

Comments

[latentfunction.livejournal.com]

Wah, no Rynne until Friday? *attaches self to you* It's really pretty, though, so have fun!

And (I know I'm not British in the slightest but whatever), I never got The Talk or the school version. (Well, I got the school version when I was 15 and already knew what was going on.) See, where I went to elementary school, they gave the School Talk in 6th grade, but the summer between 5th and 6th we moved. The new school gave in it 5th grade, so I pretty much never got it. (I did, however, figure things out on my own in 2nd grade (and actually started writing something about it in class, ohGOD I'd forgotten that) and then proceeded to dig out the encyclopedia and read up on it. Wow, I've been smuttier so much longer than I'd thought....)

[thistlerose.livejournal.com]

We had sex ed as part of our required semester of Health Ed, back in sophomore year, in high school. We had a thing about intercourse -- the technical stuff -- STDs, checking yourself for tumors, that sort of thing. We had someone come in and do a condom demonstration. She also handed out free condoms, which we were allowed to play with. :) Shortly after that, the school chancellor outlawed condom demos in public schools. Which I think is a phenomenally bad idea. My high school prided itself on its liberalism, though, so we continued to give out free condoms.

I've known the mechanics of sex since I was really young. My mother was a maternity nurse and my father taught biology. There were always textbooks lying around.

The kids in HP seem awfully repressed, at least in canon. O_o

[vixenette.livejournal.com]

Since I'm not British (as much as I pretend to myself that I am,) I'll just say that my situation was like yours - we had this "if you don't sign this form your kid will be subjected to not-so-graphic sex education, which is really more about the diseases you can get if you have sex rather than how to have SAFE sex anyway" thing going. I actually learned the "inserting tab A into slot B" stuff (lmao, that cracked me up, btw) from, er, tv I think. Sad. My dad never had The Talk with my sister and I.

Eh.

Anyway, check this out (http://www.livejournal.com/users/astra_argentea/42682.html). Thought you might like to see it! :D

[rynne.livejournal.com]

O.O That has utterly amazed me and thank you for bringing it to my attention! It also reminds me that I have not yet sent you the revised version of the fic, because I added bits, and changed the summary so it's not so revealing. Plus, I have...a lot of other fics to send you o_O. You want them all at once, or over a period of several days or so? (once I get back from Colorado, of course *g*)

[tinitinytina.livejournal.com]

I remember back in fifth grade, we had to sit through a video on puberty which talked about why we have our painful periods.

And then in health, we talked about STDs and AIDS.

But that's about it. My parents have never given me The Talk (Dad blushes from shock when I make a perverted comment/innuendo or understand a joke of that manner), and I haven't had any other sex ed class in school.

[dreamingreader.livejournal.com]

When I lived in England I went to an English school and all that so I did receive the English version of The Talk. They gave it to us in fifth and sixth grade (year six and seven) and it was the same old thing. The girls and the boys were herded into different classrooms and shown what a tampon looks like, a condom, etc and shown all that fun educational video stuff. It was rather awkward because of the age group we were in but on the whole rather painless. The Brits are pretty open about sex from what I experienced.

[immortalis.livejournal.com]

Not from England, but sex ed here is a bit different than in Nevada. We get a really crappy talk in elementary school that wasn't even about sex, more about puberty and periods and stuff. In middle school, we only got an STD talk, not even a sex talk.

I'm not sure about high school sex ed here for public school, because I went to private school. And now that was an interesting experience. We never got any talks on sex or on STDs or on contraceptives. We got the chastity/abstinence talk. Because, y'know, condoms are the devil and none of us were ever having any sex. No, none at all...

[arislanchan.livejournal.com]

Hmm. I never had "The Talk" with my parents either. :p And from speaking to friends, I get the impression that my primary school wasn't the norm, but we didn't get sex ed there either.
My secondary school never really gave it - we learned about the "technicalities" in biology, but the most we did about sex outside of that was learnng about some STDs and condoms.

So, not very good really. :p But I don't think my experience is typical of British schools.