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[nenjin]

A message more in line with "pregnancy early in life has a significant impact on how successful and independent you will be afterwards, and also on how healthy you will be later in life.  Birth control exists, but is not 100% effective. Every time you have sex, you risk pregnancy and contracting STDs, and while every effort is made to ensure that abortion is safe, it too is not 100% so, and can and does result in permanent complications, including those that can only be solved with an emergency hysterectomy-- the surgical removal of the uterus-- in a small but significant number of cases.  It is important to know that misuse of contraceptives such as condoms and birth control can dramatically reduce their effectiveness, increasing your chances of contracting an STD or becoming pregnant. The best option that you have to stay healthy is to avoid sexual contact. If you decide to ignore that sound advice, it is important that you know just what exactly it is you are risking, and what your options are."

This is the sex education I got. In the 90s. I can't really claim to know what schools are teaching today since I don't have kids. But I'm guessing they're not out there cataloging a list of perversions kids can indulge in, like "Hey, there's buffet of ways to have sex! Grab ya a plate!"

[Putnam]

I was just in high school last year, so I could definitely tell you.

It's like that, minus the other options. Pretty much abstinence-only here in Washington (southeastern, basically Idaho with legal weed).

[MaximumZero]

A message more in line with "pregnancy early in life has a significant impact on how successful and independent you will be afterwards, and also on how healthy you will be later in life.  Birth control exists, but is not 100% effective. Every time you have sex, you risk pregnancy and contracting STDs, and while every effort is made to ensure that abortion is safe, it too is not 100% so, and can and does result in permanent complications, including those that can only be solved with an emergency hysterectomy-- the surgical removal of the uterus-- in a small but significant number of cases.  It is important to know that misuse of contraceptives such as condoms and birth control can dramatically reduce their effectiveness, increasing your chances of contracting an STD or becoming pregnant. The best option that you have to stay healthy is to avoid sexual contact. If you decide to ignore that sound advice, it is important that you know just what exactly it is you are risking, and what your options are."

This is the sex education I got. In the 90s.

I got nothing of the sort. In the 90s. I got, "Hey, kids! We're going to shuffle all the girls out of the room because this is going to get weird. We're going to tell you nothing about sex, contraceptives, or biology, we're just going to show you awkward videos of childbirth and pictures of diseased genitals with no context besides a disease name! Have fun trying to sleep tonight!"

[Elephant Parade]

A message more in line with "pregnancy early in life has a significant impact on how successful and independent you will be afterwards, and also on how healthy you will be later in life.  Birth control exists, but is not 100% effective. Every time you have sex, you risk pregnancy and contracting STDs, and while every effort is made to ensure that abortion is safe, it too is not 100% so, and can and does result in permanent complications, including those that can only be solved with an emergency hysterectomy-- the surgical removal of the uterus-- in a small but significant number of cases.  It is important to know that misuse of contraceptives such as condoms and birth control can dramatically reduce their effectiveness, increasing your chances of contracting an STD or becoming pregnant. The best option that you have to stay healthy is to avoid sexual contact. If you decide to ignore that sound advice, it is important that you know just what exactly it is you are risking, and what your options are."

This is the sex education I got. In the 90s. I can't really claim to know what schools are teaching today since I don't have kids. But I'm guessing they're not out there cataloging a list of perversions kids can indulge in, like "Hey, there's buffet of ways to have sex! Grab ya a plate!"

Grade 8/9: Biology
Grade 9: General stuff. How it relates to society, how to protect yourself, and similar stuff.
Grade 10: Pretty much the same as in Grade 9, but more specific.

At least, that was what happened at my schools. I believe it varies from school to school, and it certainly varies from country to country.

[nenjin]

"Hey, kids! We're going to shuffle all the girls out of the room because this is going to get weird. We're going to tell you nothing about sex, contraceptives, or biology, we're just going to show you awkward videos of childbirth and pictures of diseased genitals with no context besides a disease name! Have fun trying to sleep tonight!"

Region? I'm the heartland....but my town has always been a "liberal" enclave in a red state.

[MetalSlimeHunt]

I am not saying "kids shouldn't be told! Sex is a dirty thing of the devil! OF THE DEVIL!", that's straight ups retarded.

I'm not saying you are, but that your admittedly more moderate position is still ultimately stemming from the basic idea that sex is something you Should Not Do.

A message more in line with "pregnancy early in life has a significant impact on how successful and independent you will be afterwards, and also on how healthy you will be later in life.  Birth control exists, but is not 100% effective. Every time you have sex, you risk pregnancy and contracting STDs, and while every effort is made to ensure that abortion is safe, it too is not 100% so, and can and does result in permanent complications, including those that can only be solved with an emergency hysterectomy-- the surgical removal of the uterus-- in a small but significant number of cases.  It is important to know that misuse of contraceptives such as condoms and birth control can dramatically reduce their effectiveness, increasing your chances of contracting an STD or becoming pregnant. The best option that you have to stay healthy is to avoid sexual contact. If you decide to ignore that sound advice, it is important that you know just what exactly it is you are risking, and what your options are."

Naturally, this latter one requires a pretty comprehensive sexual education package, and is what I advocate.

I can agree (on principle, your wording is questionable in several places) with this with the exception of the bolded. There's factual education, and then there's ideological avocation like that. Everybody with any education on this topic can deduce that you are taking the least possible risk by having no sex, but that isn't your place to impart as "the best option". The best option is upon the informed judgement of the individual. You risk dying every time you step into a car, and people know this, but that doesn't mean children should be told "so your best option is to avoid cars". Some people are going to have sex accepting the minute risks of proper contraception usage, and that's not really a bad thing. There's no rationality behind it, because most people are going to have sex in their lives without the intention of producing children. When I say I want factual education, I mean factual education, not "technical facts tilted to scare you and create unrealistic expectations".

I got nothing of the sort. In the 90s. I got, "Hey, kids! We're going to shuffle all the girls out of the room because this is going to get weird. We're going to tell you nothing about sex, contraceptives, or biology, we're just going to show you awkward videos of childbirth and pictures of diseased genitals with no context besides a disease name! Have fun trying to sleep tonight!"

I got outdated and horrifically vague videos in fifth grade, then nothing for three years, then borderline Christian propaganda in my first year of high school (it implied you can just generate STD's even in an exclusive relationship where neither partner is infected with anything, and went on to tell us how our purpose was to "become one flesh through marriage" before having sex, and imparted how it would be so super special on your wedding night if you were both virgins, and how not doing so is disappointing and a setup for future unhappyness). Absolutely nothing about birth control or consent. This was in a public school, mind you.

[SalmonGod]

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

Currently, our society expects people not to mess up while telling them next to nothing, and then lambasts them when they mess up. Can you imagine that standard applied to anything else?

I think this is the standard by which most of adult life operates, actually.

Not sleeping well this week.  Came home today really tired after kind of an intense day.  Lay down in bed super early, feeling ready to get to sleep quickly and catch up.  Then my kids get into a fight because the older one doesn't want to play with the younger one, and the younger one has nothing better to do than pursue his brother's attentions to the ends of the earth.  Wife is horrible at dealing with their situations and takes it out on me, by spontaneously screaming at me about a minor detail tangential to the kid drama.  I burst out of bed flaming with emotional adrenaline, and aside from slamming a door, play my usual role as the only person in the family capable of the self-discipline necessary to resolve conflicts.  Now despite the last three hours being mostly peaceful, I still can't shake this feeling of smoldering intensity and don't know when I'll be able to go to sleep again.  I can't escape tension at work or at home, and I don't even know how to describe what it's doing to me.  Like it's harder all the time to fall back into a normal state of being after some emotional or anxiety-inducing event.

[wierd]

I approach that from the standpoint that children are not mature enough to make such a rational decision. Their bodies demand sex before they really, fully, and truly understand the realities of what being a teenage mother are, or what owing child support for 20 years before even going to college actually means.

For people who haven't had a job yet, and haven't tasted what adult life is like, abstenance is the best policy.

[Putnam]

But they won't necessarily do that no matter how much you bang it into their heads. You can't really work on ideals, you have to have fallbacks. Teaching abstinence-only leads to uneducated people who think that you can prevent pregnancy by being in the shower or because you can't get pregnant the first time or something else wrong-headed.

[wierd]

And if you note, that is NOT what I advocated.

[Lagslayer]

But they won't necessarily do that no matter how much you bang it into their heads. You can't really work on ideals, you have to have fallbacks. Teaching abstinence-only leads to uneducated people who think that you can prevent pregnancy by being in the shower or because you can't get pregnant the first time or something else wrong-headed.

And if you note, that is NOT what I advocated.

+1. Please read what wierd wrote.

[mastahcheese]

I think we should show them the pictures of the zombie-like people walking around with their skin rotted off after dealing with severe cases of syphilis, and tell kids that this is exactly what will happen to them.

...This is sarcasm, by the way. I do not condone using fear tactics to control people, particularly youths.

That said, my school's sex education consisted of some woman that nobody knew that came into the auditorium and showed up MASSIVE pictures on the projector of many types of late-stage STD cases.
They looked almost exactly like some of the shock photos that some of the anti-toady trolls post.

[Frumple]

I honestly don't remember what sort sex ed my school ended up doing. I mean, I know we spent like, a day, maybe two, on it. And by day or two, I mean two class periods on the outside, so less than two hours. Some point in high school. Once. North Florida, rural school (graduating class was something less than 200, iirc.), for the curious. Probably somewhere in the late nineties. I don't even remember what year I graduated *vague shrug*

I remember the classrooms had white stone walls. I remember absolutely nothing else. It... doesn't speak highly of that school's sex ed program, at least at the time. M'not even sure if they segregated it by gender or not. Remember there were a good three or four folks knocked up (that I was aware of. Probably more I wasn't. Didn't exactly keep a hand on the school pulse.) before I got out, and teenage pregnancies were pretty common in the area regardless (Madre taught/teaches the adult school, which picks up dropouts, so... yeah).

Most of what I hear regardless of that points to sex ed in the states being able to stand some improvement, in general. As noted, less shock images, more facts. More realization that abstinence isn't really going to happen and pushing the fallback positions is probably the best idea. Frankly, if for whatever reason the institutions involved can't avoid going in the other direction and offering a "buffet of ways to have sex"... so long as the bit before this sentence goes through, I honestly don't think I care. It's not like it's not readily available online, already, with a hilariously minimal amount of effort, whereas solid advice re: issues-beyond-pleasure-and-experimentation takes considerably more effort to find and sift through.

If you're looking to minimize damage, it might even be better to get that "buffet" with less of the sex industry trappings involved, for all that American society, at least, almost certainly isn't ready for going that direction. Still a hell of a lot of social pressure against anything involving a healthier attitude toward the subject in this country

  I can't escape tension at work or at home, and I don't even know how to describe what it's doing to me.  Like it's harder all the time to fall back into a normal state of being after some emotional or anxiety-inducing event.

Sounds like plain ol' long term stress, t'me, after it's been piling on for a while without a chance to degauss. Which... yeah, been there a few times, if probably not as intensely as you are at th'mo'. It sucks.

[Flying Dice]

I got the talk from my folks when I was eight or so, at my prompting, though I had some idea of the intricacies prior to that, thanks to public school and Sean Connery's James Bond. Other than that, I slept through sex ed in high school (along with the rest of that health course). And guess what, no STDs, no pregnancies, no waking up in an unfamiliar place with a nasty hangover next to somebody I don't know. Oh, wait, I think I drifted from "common sense re: sex" to "common sense re: drinking binges" at some point there. Eh, they're pretty closely interrelated for a good length of time.

Funny thing about those health classes: they don't teach you about sex, they don't teach you about eating healthy, and they don't teach you about drugs and alcohol. It's basically just a slideshow of shock images, futile attempts to teach bored children how to calculate their BMIs, and the school cop coming in with a securely locked case full of contraband. When the instructor did that trite old STD example thing with the cups of water and the dye that shows up after a second chemical is added, I dumped mine in the trash. They spent more time trying to convince teenagers to not eat junk food, which is possibly even more futile than convincing them of the virtues of abstinence. >.>

[nenjin]

I'm glad you got some mileage out of it Frumple.

I actually guess I had two times sex ed was taught in school. First must have been about 5th or 6th grade. Pretty tame. When Q&A came I remember asking, quite seriously and innocently, what pubes were for. Got a good rise out of the class from that. I even got a vaguely evolutionary answer out of it.

Second time was probably....8th or 9th grade. And it was like 2 to 3 classes over a week or so. Likewise, a few in that class were pregnant. So it was kinda a big joke. The speech was to the half of the class that hadn't already had sex, pretty much.