I shouldn’t be shocked by what passes for sex education in South Carolina, and yet, I am. Electric chair shocked. The tween has been “learning” all about human reproduction in her physical education class for the past two weeks, and I have already had to supplement her lessons twice. It’s not that they aren’t teaching accurate information; it’s that the abridged version of the information is so conservatively skewed that they might as well call it sexual mythology.
For starters, why is sex education always taught by physical education teachers, or rather, coaches? You would think that human anatomy and reproduction should be covered in science classes, since it is, after all, science. Instead, the people responsible for grading your ability to change your clothes are the ones who misrepresent reproduction by instructing you to keep those clothes on until marriage. Maybe that’s not fair; it’s not like they created the curriculum, but still, maybe we should leave ball throwing to the PE teachers and let the science teachers talk about actual balling.
The first week, the class covered anatomy and function of the reproductive system. The tween didn’t really want to talk about it much, but the day they covered male anatomy, she was a little squirrely when she got home. I asked her what they learned, and was it just penis and testicles. She told me not to say penis, and also that her friends ran down the halls yelling “testicles!” in an effort to lessen the embarrassment. She then told me she already knew all about the cock and balls, which I didn’t really believe.
“Well, then, what did you learn? Did you learn about the seminal vesicles?” I asked her.
“Gross,” she said.
“What about the prostate? The vas deferens?”
“Stop it, Mom,” she said.
“How about this? Which male part sounds like a spell from Harry Potter?” I asked her.
She blinked at me.
“Spongeosum!” I said, waving an imaginary wand at her.
“Go away!” she said back.
The next week, she came home and told me, “Today we learned all about the STDs and the HIVs.”
“The HIVs?” I laughed.
“You know what I mean. They told us all about the diseases and how to treat them and how to prevent them.”
“How do you treat them?” I asked.
“Medicine,” she said.
“Well, more specifically, antibiotics, for the most part anyway. How do you prevent them?” I asked her.
“Abstinence,” she said. “You should wait until you are married.”
“And that way your new husband can infect you with an untreated STD? Are you serious?”
“What, Mom?”
“Nevermind. Did they talk about condoms?”
“No, but I already know about them because Condom Boy brought one to school. Remember when he got in-school suspension?”
She had already told me about this boy in her French class who was suspended for bringing rubbers to school, earning him the nickname Condom Boy. Have you seen a sixth grade boy lately? I don’t think they could find their dicks unless they can hold an Xbox remote, like an elephant trunk. While sixth grade girls look like they are fifteen, sixth grade boys look like they are nine. But back to the more important part of the conversation.
“What do you mean they didn’t show you a condom? They didn’t even talk about it?”
“No, they just said to wait until marriage. And I don’t think that’s very realistic, do you?”
“No, sweetie. They should have said college, at least.”
She rolled her eyes at me.
I was pissed. This wasn’t sex education. It was morality legislation. If you want to educate a kid, tell them about sexually transmitted diseases and what they can do to you. Frame it with a little history. Who doesn’t want to hear about the madness of syphilis or watch a military film about venereal disease? And then whip out some Trojans and show these kids how to use them. I’m not saying you should pull a volunteer in front of the classroom and roll it on his Johnson. But seriously, we don’t live in 1950. Kids don’t neck and pet; they hook up. With all the sexualizing of our society, why would we decide the best way to educate our kids about sex is to pretend it doesn’t happen?
That night, I decided to do what the school wasn’t willing to do. I took out a condom and showed it to my child. “Look,” I said. “This is the package a condom comes in.” I ripped it open and took it out of the package. “See? Do you want to touch it?”
“No, Mom, gross!” She turned her face to the wall.
“Turn around,” I told her. “I want you to see this. This is what a condom looks like. It smells like a balloon, doesn’t it?”
“I don’t want to smell it!”
“I mean you can smell it from there, not to put your nose in it.” I unrolled it and held it up for her to see. “It rolls over the penis so when it ejaculates, the sperm will stay inside the condom. And also any STDs.”
The tween turned twenty shades of red and giggled. I put my hand all the way inside the condom to show her how it could take some pressure and still not rip. “It’s pretty durable,” I pointed out.
“Please stop that!”
After I finished stretching it all about, I balled up the condom and threw it in the trash.
“Those shouldn’t be flushed. Just like tampons. They belong in the trash,” I said.
“I can’t believe you just stuck your hand inside of it,” she said.
“The things I do for you. Besides, it’s not like it was used,” I replied.
We sat down on my bed and I asked her if she had any other questions.
“Well, one. The teacher told us that we have something called a hymen and it tears during sex and also if you use a tampon. Now I’m really scared to try one.”
“You learned about hymens? What about the rest of your parts?”
“I already know the other parts,” she said.
“Did you learn about labia? And the mons pubis?”
“What are you talking about?”
Oh lord. Not this again.
“What parts did you learn?”
“Nothing I haven’t heard before,” she said.
“But they didn’t tell you anything! Did they teach you what a clitoris is?”
“What’s that?” she asked.
I sighed. “A clitoris is, um, a very sensitive part of your female anatomy. It has a lot of nerve endings in it, and it helps make sex pleasurable.” I thought that was vague but accurate enough.
“Nasty. Do boys have a clitoris too?”
“No, all their nerve endings are in their penis. Everything pretty much works through the penis.”
Yeah, the whole world revolves around it. Including sex education, apparently. I found it very odd that they would learn very detailed male anatomy but nothing of their own.
“Well, why do girls have one?”
“Think about it. Sex is about reproducing, but if it doesn’t feel good, no one would want to do it. If it’s all ripped hymens, we would die out as a species.”
“You have a point,” she said. “Can we stop talking about this now?”
“You got it.”
As angry as I was and still am that the educator's answer to preventing disease is abstinence, I am just as angry that the curriculum would go into great detail for male anatomy but only concentrate on the hymen for females. So in South Carolina, sex education is all about keeping your hymen intact and waiting until marriage. What the hell? Do they get an envelope to open on their wedding nights with the all the details that they weren’t allowed to learn at public school? And this coming from a state with one of the highest rates of teen pregnancy in the nation. Gee, I wonder why.
If they want to make these kids wait until marriage, why not really teach them about STDs? With pictures. I guarantee if middle schoolers could see a penis covered in genital warts, chances are pretty good they would all keep their pants on and legs closed. But giving teenagers inadequate and incomplete information isn’t going to prevent anything except ignorance. They need to be armed with good information about how their bodies work and what the risks are for certain activities.
Why even call it sex education?
I read a year or two ago that some kids who make abstinence pledges engage in anal sex because they don’t think that counts as losing their virginity. Do we want our sons and daughters butt fucking because they think it’s a sin to have regular intercourse? How’s that for some twisted logic?
As uncomfortable as it was to have that conversation with my daughter, at the end of the day, I know I did the right thing. She knows I will give her good information, and that I will tell her the truth. She also knows she can ask me anything. And the best part is, she is so freaked out about the whole idea of sex that I know I have a few more years before we have to talk about it again.
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