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Avatar universal

School

I am curious to know how many people had sexual education, "sex ed", in their high school and/or junior high school? If you did have that class, did you go over how to prevent pregnancy or did you just learn about abstinence? Did you learn about how pregnancy occurs? And finally, did you learn about STDs?
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1809109 tn?1331803777
I don't remember which country I read this about, (I'll try to find the news article), but I think it said something about Amsterdam.  Anyway somewhere in the Neatherlands they start teaching sex education in kindergarten and they have the lowest teen pregnancy and abortion rate in Europe. Found a link, it was the Dutch. It's not the article I read though, but still talks about their sex ed.  http://www.rnw.nl/english/video/sex-education-starts-first-grade
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Avatar universal
That is really interesting. The US has the highest teen pregnancy rate in the industrialized world, so we're obviously missing something(even though education alone may not drop the numbers) and I'm sure we could learn something from other countries. For the state I live in, California, the only thing schools are required by law to teach is about HIV/AIDS, other than that schools don't have to teach anything about sex ed and most schools teach very little about it. At my old high school we never touched on condoms or any type of birth control, no demonstrations, nothing. I really hope the school system in the US can change.
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1095600 tn?1333823007
So grade 7/8 we had sex Ed. Here in Canada at that point it was 'this is a penis, this is a vagina. The vagina has a cervix, uterus, ovaries. ' so on and so forth. We never went over sex, birth control, condoms (how to use), what to do if condoms fail etc. It was loosely an abstinence only program. But it was hidden.
In highschool it was a rehash of grade 7/8 with a LITTLE more teaching about condoms etc (we had a nurse from the local health unit in everyday for everything from minor health concerns, to pregnancy tests and everything in-between) we got the putting a condom on a banana/cucumber demonstration.
It wasn't until grade 11 when I took the parenting class (the one with the fake baby) that I actually learned about the pill, patch, iud etc. Plus we then learned how conception, pregnancy etc worked.
Here in Canada in public school the talk a little about birth control, but it doesn't cover enough. If you are in the catholic school system (no surprise) it's abstinence only to my knowledge, and those schools have the highest teen pregnancy rate.
In the last few years they are thinking about changing sex Ed to start at like grade 2/3. And go straight through elementary/middle school to help get kids and parents talking about sex etc.
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Avatar universal
my school never went through any of the sex ed classes or anything, and i took health twice in 11th and 12th grade, so yu would think i would have. But nope, i do remember in like 5th grade though they had some stuff on it, not much about sex but what can happen when you have sex. But other then that, nothing else was really brought up.
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Avatar universal
Thanks for responding!

I think most high schools teach heavy on the abstinence-only education. I don't remember much about my own health class, though I do know we went over STDs and their symptoms, along with what happens during pregnancy and how it occurs. Although I don't think they ever taught us about any birth control options and how to use those. Unfortunately I didn't pay much attention in that class and neither did many others, as the teacher we had was a bit of a pervert. Great, huh?

Would love to hear more people respond. :)
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1809109 tn?1331803777
Washington public schools taught an "abstinence- heavy" sex education starting in 5th grade. They had diagrams in 5th grade that taught you how the systems worked, acknowledged STDs and their common symptoms, and answered any question. They pushed abstinence, but still gave the kids info on Planned Parenthood, abortions, birth control, etc.

I never went to Sex Ed, I learned what they taught through friends. I told my mom I didn't want to, so she opted me out of it- after lecturing me on STDs, condoms, and birth control at 11. (The last of which was unnecessary as my sister gave birth at 15 while so I was pretty firm in my thoughts to wait). Ironically my older sister did go through the sex ed courses from the public schools and it didn't seem to help her.
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