What was sexual education like for you?

There was a bit at 3rd grade "difference between boys and girls and where babys come from" (no no sex talk)

In 5th grade I was absent in hospital but in 5th grade you learn sexual biologie, contraceptions, menstruation, puberty and i think STDs. When i got back from hospital it was mid way into the lessons about female genitalia and tampons so i didnt learn it from school but from books at home. I dont know if they talked about different sexualitys existing, if not this needs to change.

7th grade has puberty and hormones, genetics, pregnacy and birth.

I dont know what it was in 9th grade but there defenetly was also something that could fall under 'sex ed".

It always was open, no shaming and professional

Germany Bavaria. It is manditory and you cant take your child out of those classes because its part of the regular biologie class

Maryland early 2000s. We had a real health teacher. It was pretty clinical and factual for the most part. The only thing that really stood out was the teacher telling us that peeing killed any sperm left in the urethra and a kid asking if he could "piss in his woman and not wear a condom." This poor old teacher has to say "Do not piss in your woman."

Only what was on the biology national exam spec. Lots of hormone cycles of FSH and lutenising hormone, literally nothing outside the cervix.

I'm in Finland, in my 40s. I don't remember much. I think in the early teens we did have lessons in school about sex and reproductive biology. What I do remember is the "real" sex education stuff around 15-16 years of age, that was part of the health education classes, because, well, I think it got inadvertently weird. The physical education / health education teacher we had was retiring that year. To no one's surprise, the stuff in the textbook was left for us to read on our own. Because "ummm I don't think I need to cover this, uhhh heh heh, ummm, you kids probably already know about this". And everyone was, like, thank God we were spared of that.

Middle School (Mississippi): Basically all lies: having sex with a condom will give you AIDS, abortions are evil and most women who get them die of cancer or suicide. Even 6th grade me knew that shit was fucking wrong, but I was already on thin ice in that school for fucking up the curve, thank Homosexual Jesus that I was only there half a year.

Junior High (New Jersey): Skip ahead to 9th grade. Sex-Ed was taught by a terrified gym teacher who was just adorable. This was pretty comprehensive, lots of biology and factual information. It was the early 90s so a big part of it was teaching how to avoid getting HIV, teaching both abstinence and condoms. Some mention of same-sex relationships, but when asked about the risk of HIV transmission from lesbian sex he blanched and said he didn't know. No real fault here given the time period. They also taught various forms of birth control and other STIs. There was an undercurrent of promoting abstinence but also some pragmatic realism. In retrospect it could have been better, but compared to most of the country it was very good.

Mostly porn as a kid, then actual research on my own. Sucks that sex ed is so ignored

Technical, but no mention of the social, psychological, or emotional aspects of sexuality.

Female orgasm was literally never discussed or even spoken of. This was in the very conservative city of Anaheim, in very conservative Orange County, California.

It was pure abstinence only. Our teachers were only allowed to tell us not to have sex, and that was pretty much it. Never even saw a diagram of a vagina or a penis.

I remember in elementary school we had a lesson on sex organs. When I turned in my test paper, I curiously asked my teacher, "If the sperm is in the male, and the egg is in the female, how does the sperm transfer over?"

All she said was, "Well, what do you think?" To which I replied, "I don't know." Then I quietly returned to my desk. Later I discussed it with my friend and we concluded that a male must pee into a female. Because at the time, pee was the only thing we knew came out of the penis.

My parents had bought a book on the subject to read to us kids. I got a hold of it first and read it by myself. When my dad brought me to bed, I "educated" him about where kids come from. It's still one of my parents' favorite stories about me as a kid.

In school, sex ed was alright. They taught us everything we need to know incl. how to prevent STDs and pregnancies. The only thing I would criticize in hindsight is that they used giant test tubes (25cm) to teach us how to put on condoms. That made a lot of boys feel inadequate.

I was raised partially in a Unitarian Universalist church which believes in comprehensive sex education. I was still a dumbass about it but they definitely tried to inform me and I think I have a healthier sex life than most people have had.

I had an surprising one, actually: I went to a private religious school, but I had a strangely comprehensive sex education.

It started with unvarnished discussions of human anatomy and cautions about sexual abuse around age 8, and then moved on to the basics of (hetero)sexuality by the time I was a preteen. In high school that continued, though talk about birth control was postponed until the health units of later physical education courses, which not everyone took. Of course, the stress was always that sexual activity should be limited to monogamous (heterosexual) marriage, and there was no mention of anything outside of the hetero-normative.

The last wrinkle was that it was all opt-out. At every point, there was at least one person who would leave the room for the duration of the class because their parents really didn't want them learning about naughty bits.

So it ended up actually providing a pretty good foundation. It was still incomplete and biased, but a lot better than what you would expect when you hear "private religious school."

9th grade. Public school. Teacher opens the first class with "All penises are the same size" and "I don't answer questions. That's what your handouts are for". I can't for the life of me understand how my generation had such a high teenage pregnancy rate, can you?

Ohh, good question!

Well, in middle school, the teachers split the boys from the girls. Unfortunately, we got stuck with the security guard as our male role model. Instead of talking about how our dicks are supposed to work during puberty, he spent the hour vagely instructing a bunch of kids how to flirt with women. It was boring as shit, kind of inappropriate, and we would've been better off doing literally anything else. I also wasn't taught sex ed at my high school. I have a vague memory of being gathered once in the auditorium for a talk this one time, but I don't remember them going over anything important.

So instead, I used to frequent the local LGBT community center for years after school. And that's where I got all my real education about so many interesting topics. The space was sex-positive, meaning you could openly discuss it educationally, share your experiences, and ask questions without judgment. They covered all the types of sexual orientations, all the types of condoms, sex toys, sexual practices, diseases, treatment options, warned about drug use during sex, gave a lot of health recommendations with the latest research, the whole nine yards. They regularly had programming for young adults during weeknights with topics relating to the community that didn't necessarily relate to sex. It was amazing and eye-opening to have my gay life fully explained before I became an adult. I wish it were more common, if only for the experience alone, which was wonderful.

But what I love is that I've seen the same format again at my current LGBT community center in another country. It wouldn't surprise me if I walked in and kindly asked for help, and they'd answer all my questions regardless of my background or orientation or whatever. Their willingness to communicate accurate medical information for your safety is incredible.

I had several classes during different years, but what I recall from the first, in middle school during the mid 90s, was our teacher, Bunny Morris. She was memorizable because her son was nationally renowned pop artist Burton Morris.

She was fine. I recall that she started her class with the statement that "we are all sexual beings", which sounded cheesey to me at the time but in hindsight seems like a very lucid mission statement for introducing preteens to sexual education.

I don't remember the specifics, but I have great sexual health as an adult, so I suppose she did her job. It definitely wasn't the shamey kind.

It was early 00’s in the US South and basically boiled down to don’t have sex before marriage, you WILL catch an STD (boys) or get pregnant (girls). Our science teacher though, went off script their last year teaching, and said we’d likely ignore the advice to abstain and if we did have sex, to use a condom. I always liked that teacher.

This same public high school also taught the life and death of Jesus in history class.

It was perfectly OK and uneventful enough that I'll never understand why anyone would feel the need to discuss it.

Almost 100% via public school.

My first sex-ed class was in fourth grade, then another in fifth and sixth grade. In junior high and high school I was required to take general health courses that covered aspects of sex.

My religious parents didn't teach me shit and I wish they had.

Catholic school in the UK in the early 00s - basically "here's what a condom is because the government says we have to show you, now wait till you're married and don't be gay"

Surprisingly comprehensive, considering I took health at a Kentucky high school back around 1994.

I can't recall if it was on the second or third year of high school, but it was a single Biology class. The teacher was comfortable with it, but she was very clearly biased towards abstinence and insisted the only way to be 100% sure was to just not have sex.

Despite that, she still talked about basics of sex and genitalia, a few common STDs, and basic preventive measures, both for pregnancy and STDs - even if they weren't particularly effective. Both coitus interruptus and sodomy (we had a loooot of fun repeating that word for a week or so) were mentioned as ways to avoid pregnancy, but condoms and IUDs were the real recommendations.

As a class, we weren't too rowdy, though there was a kid or two that made a few too many jokes - and the teacher cut them off fairly quickly. I also recall she handled pamphlets with each of the methods talked during class and their approximate efficacy.

This was in 2005-ish and I'm Brazilian.

Also of note this was the second time, the first attempt happened in middle school (and in a different school altogether) and we had to do a presentation on STDs and the like. The teacher decided to cancel at the last minute because we were clearly too embarrassed to actually talk about the subject in front of our classmates.

Maybe I had a good education? I feel like it equipped me properly to make sound decisions. Gave information of puberty, changes, hormones, STD/STI, protection, pregnancies.

In the moment, the class was just another class. Sure, it was funny (teehee weiner and boobs), but reflecting later in life, I made a few better decisions because of it.

Grade 6. Biology classes lasted about an hour or so, every day, for a week or two.

Boys and girls were broken into their own groups. I assume this was to help avoid being embarrassed about things in front of the opposite sex.

We were told if we made jokes or giggled, we failed for the day and had to sit in the hall. We nervously and embarrassingly giggled a bit the first day but after we got into it things were fine.

The classes were very straight forward. Dry. Matter of fact. Covered everything they needed to cover for basic biology, how sex works, body parts and what they do, etc, but didn't talk about things like birth control.

standard 7th grade or so biology class stuff. 1990ish. A week or two of classes. that’s it.

Mine talked about various contraceptive methods, STDs, and accidental/teen pregnancies. It did focus more on the pregnancy part than the STD part, but they also briefly talked about how condoms are still important even if you're gay, since they prevent STDs.

I have a cousin I went to highschool with. He grew up in the south, but he finished highschool with me in Minnesota, and he told me his sex ed curriculum down south consisted of a brief talk on how sex is bad and that it is important to eat vegetables. Even though he had health class credits from down south, the school made him take their health class and he was happy to find out it's much more comprehensive than the south.

With parental consent, we got the basic mechanics taught to us in grade 7. The very first thing was the teacher asked us what words we knew for genitalia (dick etc), wrote them all on the board, and then banned us from using them in the class. We were only to use the proper words.

Then in grade 10, without parental consent, we started getting weekly classes during our homeroom class. There were about five classes in total. It was conducted by someone from outside the school (from a group like planned parenthood I guess), but our teacher was present.

There were many discussions, different forms of contraception were introduced, and literally passed around for us to look at. The pill, dental dams, condoms, female condoms, (I'm probably forgetting some). We practiced putting condoms onto plastic bananas, and were all given one (some?) to take home.

There was an anonymous question box which the instructor answered. Sex for pleasure, including masturbation was discussed. I don't remember anything about LGBT as it was a different time then. After high school, though many classmates came out.

I do remember one of these lessons was about STDs, and the instructor was going to show those horrific pictures as others have described. But our (cool) teacher stopped them. Overall, it was a great experience for us.

I remember in the 5th grade we were reproductive taught anatomy with black and white line drawings of adult genitalia and it literally didn't occur to me that it had anything to do with my body or anyone else's. The hairy spread beavers or the cross sections with lines referring to some squiggle as the vas deferens... It was about as meaningful as being in geography class trying to memorize the names of every island in the arctic.

8th grade and in bio class. Focus was on abstinence being the best way to precent STDs and stuff, and also using protection like condoms.

Religious school taught me nothing, but religious parents gave a surprisingly detailed and good explanation of sex, including mention of gay people. Then they got me a private tutor for biology so I would know the material to pass the exam.

Got gifted a biology encyclopedia left open on my table opened on the page about reproduction

A mysterious brown paper bag was tossed out of a car window aimed to land near me playing in the front yard...

Like god intended.

A boring waste of my summer vacation at the time

mostly just internet

parents are conservative and don't teach shit, not that I want to talk to them anyways

school teach it in terms of biology. Eggs, Sperms, that stuff, they don't teach you how to fuck, but I think they mentioned condoms a few times, but I doubt it was even that clear. I don't think they explicitly mentioned how sexual intetcourse is supposed to work.

internet is a wonderful thing, its just sad people these days use it for tik toks instead of reading Wikipedia.

Wikipedia is love, Wikipedia is life. (Yes I know to double check the stuff)

I did the practicum before the theory. It helped.

In Highschool I took health and it was the diagrams of the different junk, pictures and videos about STDs, saying most birth control doesn't actually work very well (e.g. Condoms have a 36% success rates at prevent STDs or pregnancy) so it's best to sign a card swearing you'll be abstinent until marriage. Only one person signed the card since we were, thankfully, given a choice. No talking about being gay, since it's a red state. They spent more time on a bunch of different drugs than sex.

Before high school there wasn't really "sex" ed, just showing videos about puberty and ways to check for cancer/lumps. But I went to a Catholic school before highschool. There also might have been stuff about how Masturbation is bad in the Catholics "sex ed".

I don't remember too much of it. Was probably grade 6 or 7. They split us up by boys/girls. The only thing that stuck is the teacher telling us that when people with penises sleep, their penis goes UP and DOWN and UP and DOWN and she very animatedly gestured this out.

To this day, I have never noticed anybody's penis rise and fall while they're asleep, but nobody really feels comfortable with me watching either ¯(ツ)/¯

Watched videos with captain condom and penny penicillin

Soccer coach told us it would hurt to push a baby from his vagina then some boy behind me asked “you have a vagina?” Bad teacher and no one cared in middle school

I’m from the UK and in my 40s. I got shown a video about genitalia at primary school when I was about 10. Then we got taught it several times until we left school, often about masturbation or safe sex. All from a pretty serious educational kind of perspective, not demonising it or anything. Largely saying that masturbation is normal and that you should have sex safely. I remember some weird video where they talked about masturbating by twisting your penis rather than the usual motion.

A handy VHS tape that I spotted under the couch when lying on the floor after school.

Made a copy and put it back.

Still don't know which parent did it.