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Sex/Relationship Education at school; the Good, the Bad and the Ugly.

Hey everyone, I was thinking I really didn't learn much about relationships in school. I don't know if this was because it was a ridiculously catholicy school or if all schools were like this.

The only thing I got was in biology an awful video from inside the human body and a girl fainted. Also my RE teacher told us all that a girl managed to get pregnant without having sex but from foreplay and we should all be careful because we could end up pregnant :facepalm:

What are you entertaining sex ed stories? Or was yours really informative? :h:

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It was awful. We were never given any information on relationships or contraception at all, which I thought would have been important. We were told about puberty / body changes and a bit about sex. Although, I will never understand why, we at a sex talk at 16. :s-smilie:
Original post by OU Student
It was awful. We were never given any information on relationships or contraception at all, which I thought would have been important. We were told about puberty / body changes and a bit about sex. Although, I will never understand why, we at a sex talk at 16. :s-smilie:


I'm the same we were told that we'd go to hell essentially is we used contraception. I learnt everything from on here and BBC teens website lol.
I don't even think we got as far as contraception! We basically had... this is how you make babies and these are periods.

I also think that part of this education should be learning about other sexualities, how to handle the emotions that come with intimacy such as jealousy, how to cope with arguments and conflict etc.
Reply 4
Original post by lyrical_lie
I learnt everything from on here


:lol:
First experience of sex ed involved an awful cartoon video and documentary on pregnancy and birth at the age of 11 (one boy fainted when he saw the blood during labour).

Things improved slightly at secondary school - the main focus was on the importance of contraception for the first couple of years, then in year 10/11, the focus shifted onto how to look after babies. I guess that says something about the kind of school I went to - half-hearted attempt to stop us getting pregnant, then teaching us how to deal with it once we failed.

Most of what I learnt came from research from books: finding the sex scenes in fictional books and then using dictionaries to look up the words I didn't know. I also found a science book called "Woman's Body" which taught me a lot....
I actually live in a very Catholic (theoretically) country and went to a Catholic secondary school and I had an alright sex ed, like we got all the information about contraception etc., the teachers would just sometimes stop to mention that this or that was prohibited by the Church, but we'd still get the information. The sex ed was led by the biology teacher (female) and the social studies teacher (male), we had some classes in a mixed sex group with them both and then girls and boys had some separate classes with the teacher of their own gender. Generally the whole thing seemed quite OK to me although as a not straight person I noticed there was pretty much no info on homosexuality but I guess that considering the environment and circumstances, my school still performed above average.
I don't really remember anything. My only experience of it was in year 7, and not again until I was in college, which was the equivalent of year 10. In year 7 I remember watching a video in science about how babies were made (demonstrated by cartoon). I don't remember all of it. A few weeks later (I think) the boys of year 7 were taken into one room, the girls into another and each were told respectively about condoms and periods. I don't really understand why they didn't tell us all about both. The condoms were later opened and blown up or flopped against people's faces. The girls were given a couple of free sanitary towels and tampons, again some were opened and thrown about. I suspect most of these were kept because the girls were actually going to use them for their intended purpose. I remember getting a free leaflet about puberty, and the entire room feeling incredibly uncomfortable when a girl asked "but what do you use when you're wearing a thong?" The answer was a tampon, but the real issue is why is this 11 year old wearing a thong.
(edited 9 years ago)
Reply 8
How do people faint over this? I've heard stories of people fainting from my school as well, what's it all about? The first time I learned about it I was completely.. normal...
Original post by Enoxial
:lol:


Lol it was more the contraception wiki I used which was pretty useful as I had never even heard of the implant before never mind how good it was (for me).

Original post by Viridiana
I actually live in a very Catholic (theoretically) country and went to a Catholic secondary school and I had an alright sex ed, like we got all the information about contraception etc., the teachers would just sometimes stop to mention that this or that was prohibited by the Church, but we'd still get the information. The sex ed was led by the biology teacher (female) and the social studies teacher (male), we had some classes in a mixed sex group with them both and then girls and boys had some separate classes with the teacher of their own gender. Generally the whole thing seemed quite OK to me although as a not straight person I noticed there was pretty much no info on homosexuality but I guess that considering the environment and circumstances, my school still performed above average.


See mine was a private school so they didn't need to stick to the national curriculum so they just pretended it never existed.

I do remember in primary school maybe P6 when the head teacher took the girls of the class into the cloakroom and told them what the bin was for in the toilet. I don't even think I knew what a period was at that time.

I really think it's a shame that it's so taboo. I remember one girl asking a friend to bring her bag to the toilet and the teacher thought she was doing her homework only for the girl to have to announce to the class she was on her period.

Also definitely agree with you in regards to different kinds of sexuality that was completely ignored. Not negative or positive just pretended it didn't exist which I assume they decided was the safest course. I felt so ignorant when I started uni and even now when I'm browsing the threads people will be talking about different sexualities I have never even heard of never mind know what they are and I just feel really ignorant.
Original post by ubisoft
How do people faint over this? I've heard stories of people fainting from my school as well, what's it all about? The first time I learned about it I was completely.. normal...


I think it's probably attention seeking a little bit and because of blood?
We didn't get taught hardly anything.
I remember seeing a video of a birth when we were 12 years old, and a girl fainted and hit her head on the table! That was about it really.
Original post by lyrical_lie


See mine was a private school so they didn't need to stick to the national curriculum so they just pretended it never existed.

I do remember in primary school maybe P6 when the head teacher took the girls of the class into the cloakroom and told them what the bin was for in the toilet. I don't even think I knew what a period was at that time.

I really think it's a shame that it's so taboo. I remember one girl asking a friend to bring her bag to the toilet and the teacher thought she was doing her homework only for the girl to have to announce to the class she was on her period.

Also definitely agree with you in regards to different kinds of sexuality that was completely ignored. Not negative or positive just pretended it didn't exist which I assume they decided was the safest course. I felt so ignorant when I started uni and even now when I'm browsing the threads people will be talking about different sexualities I have never even heard of never mind know what they are and I just feel really ignorant.



Well although I'm very anti-Church, I have to admit my school was amazing. Only the brightest kids in the city (with best primary school results) and some kids with problems (like have no parents etc) got in and we got the best possible teachers and tutoring available, the school (funded by the Salesian Society) was very rich with amazing resources and facilities. Like we had a competition of knowledge about the school patron and you could win a trip to Italy or a digital camera haha, computers, projectors and interactive whiteboards in all rooms, cool stuff.
We did have to agree to taking compulsory RE all years and attending a few masses during a typical school year, but experiencing the environment of mutual respect and desire to get a proper education made it absolutely worth it. I do know though that most religious school are crap :/ Can't complain about mine though!
Johnny condom

Taught "enough" about it tbh. There was a LOT of emphasis on STIs at my school though all i can recall for most of my lessons was being told about STIs yikes.
Hardly learnt anything about sex until I got a book detailing everything.

Had to use the internet for learning about the sex acts.
We had loads. How the body works, how to get STDs sorted, all methods of contraception, and even a lesson on how to put a condom on.

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Went to Catholic Primary/Secondary (at the wishes of my Catholic mother), the extent of sex ed in my secondary school was this quote: "We can tell you there are forms of artificial contraception out there, but we can't tell you how to access them".
We had very little sex/relationships education at my school. One RE teacher told my sister's class that the withdrawal method works and that they should use it :eek: :confused: :facepalm:

Aside from the fact that the withdrawal method is against Catholic teaching anyway, I thought that was very irresponsible of her to say to young girls :mad:
Original post by Viridiana
Well although I'm very anti-Church, I have to admit my school was amazing. Only the brightest kids in the city (with best primary school results) and some kids with problems (like have no parents etc) got in and we got the best possible teachers and tutoring available, the school (funded by the Salesian Society) was very rich with amazing resources and facilities. Like we had a competition of knowledge about the school patron and you could win a trip to Italy or a digital camera haha, computers, projectors and interactive whiteboards in all rooms, cool stuff.
We did have to agree to taking compulsory RE all years and attending a few masses during a typical school year, but experiencing the environment of mutual respect and desire to get a proper education made it absolutely worth it. I do know though that most religious school are crap :/ Can't complain about mine though!

Wow that does sound amazing, I did love my school to be fair and was there on an academic bursary, however their sex ed teaching was crap. The rest not to shabby :tongue:


Original post by Obiejess
We had loads. How the body works, how to get STDs sorted, all methods of contraception, and even a lesson on how to put a condom on.

See that sounds like what we should have, helps take the embarrassment out of it, for example I still haven't brought myself to get a smear test, and I didn't even know what it was until I got the letter from the NHS. Did you get anything on different types of sexualities and how relationships work?
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Original post by The_Lonely_Goatherd
We had very little sex/relationships education at my school. One RE teacher told my sister's class that the withdrawal method works and that they should use it :eek: :confused: :facepalm:

Aside from the fact that the withdrawal method is against Catholic teaching anyway, I thought that was very irresponsible of her to say to young girls :mad:


That's ridiculous. At least with us it was a fairly constant don't do it it's bad. Better that than ending up pregnant too young.

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