I want to add to my own post, that abstinence was very much part of the program, too.

I can remember one point very vividly. Bearing in mind that we had to sit boy-girl-boy-girl, the teachers (always one male, one female) passed around a grapefruit. Then the teacher said how many of the girls complained about cramps every month, which was the result of a heavy period. He then said, "if you think having menstrual cramps are bad, think about this grapefruit. It's roughly the size of a baby's head. Think about the cramps that would go along with that!"

I should also add that I graduated with over 700 in my class. There were exactly two pregnancies in my entire class! Knowledge is power!

I apologize in advance if that's too graphic for some.

I went to a Catholic school.. we had sex ed in biology. No scary stuff or anything. I'm pretty sure we had no pregnancies out of a class of around 150 or so. I always heard rumors when girls would just "disappear" that they had been sent home. I'm pretty sure they expelled pregnant students or those who had abortions.

That said, maybe we shouldn't have sex ed in schools... it ought to be left to kids to research for themselves on the internet.

There are probably volunteer teachers just waiting in chat rooms.

my parents never had the "birds/bees" talk with me, and for the life of me i cant remember where i learned it from! mom did, however, explain my cycle to me in enough detail that i decided i didnt want to be a girl anymore...

by 8th grade, 3 of my classmates had children. by my graduation, 3 more of my close friends had children (one had THREE), and a handful walked across the stage pregnant. within the 2 years after graduation, all of my close friends had children, including myself at 19.

something in the sex ed curriculum isnt working. i applaud the teachers/nurses who do that for a living. i dont think its them. kids have changed, teenagers are soo hypersexed that they make me look chaste! they are having not only sex, but orgies in high school. they have had 3 and 4 partners by their sweet 16's.

there needs to be more videos and photos of EXACTLY what your stuff looks like with herpes. the bills that a baby runs up. what childbirth looks like and feels like with NO EPIDURAL. the results of an aborted child.

to quote George W...they need "shock and awe".

Catholic school:

In grade school we had sex ed seperately from any of our other classes. Once in Fourth grade, and once later in seventh or eighth when we saw the whole giving birth video. In high school we had Health class that included sex and Anatomy covered it as well.

We had sex-ed in P.E. when I was in the 6th grade and again, a more detailed version of sex-ed when I was a freshman in high school. I remember our teacher getting into a lot of trouble because she brought in different forms of birth control for us to look at and passed around a diaphragm that turned out to be hers. Ewww...

Ours was on this line - budgeting for a child while still in school, getting the baby daddy to pay support, all sorts of disease stuff, what happens inside your body when you're having sex (again, it's designed to keep the human race going, not to stop it) - much more detailed and probably more what's needed NOW than when I was in elementary/middle/high school!

Having no clue isn't all that surprising. Some people have really weird cycles. What I *DON'T* understand is why she wasn't using some form of contraception.

I think schools should teach the reproductive cycle (at age appropriate levels) as early as third grade. If you call it science, then maybe conservative parents would be a little more receptive to it. I actually learned about reproduction from a kids' biology book that my mom got me when I was five (I'm an only child, so I never really had to ask the "where do babies come from" question).

Including sex ed in biology won't make conservative parents more accepting of it. All of the same criticisms will come up.

/after all evolution is taught as science