During my junior year (high school), I heard a student remark about another male that 'he probably still thinks that his penis is only used for urinating.' That was my first exposure to any knowledge that a penis has anything to do with bearing children. Still not understanding, I became very cautious about letting my penis touch a girl while dancing for fear that a child may result! In one particular instance during high school, one of the boys, whether out of ignorance or not, told another boy to ask a particular girl if she was 'wearing a Kotex.' The boy, a victim, acted out of ignorance and asked the girl, shocking her. She in turn ran to the teacher causing quite a disturbance in the classroom.
In ninth grade, my class was reading Great Expectations by
Dickens. One day it was my turn to ask the class questions on new
vocabulary in one particular chapter. I proudly stood in front of my
class and said, "One word which many of you may not be familiar
with is intercourse. Does anyone know what it means?" As I
glanced around the class all I saw was 30 bowed heads and 30 little
smiles, including the smile on my teacher's face. I kept asking if
anyone possibly knew the proper definition but I got no response, so
I replied, "Well, it's a relationship between two people." The teacher
at that point said I could take my seat. My best buddy sat next to
me, and he immediately threw me a dictionary and told me to read
definition number one: "Sexual union of a man and a woman." That
is my first recollection of any sexual terminology.
In summarizing studies of family life education, Mayer and Nye (1964) report
that sex education received least attention of all topics considered. They make the
following generalizations: (1) the greatest percentage of family life courses are offered
in home economics and social studies; (2) more girls than boys are enrolled in high
school family life courses; (3) most family life courses are elective rather than
required, and most are offered to both sexes; (4) most of the family life teachers are
women, practically all are married, and many have had college preparation in home
economics; (5) areas involving marriage, dating, and courtship receive the most
attention in family life courses; sex education receives the least.
The following cases reflect on sex and family life education received in the school
as seen through the eyes of teenagers. Not all school sex "education" is in the
classroom, as the first case makes clear.
An experience that brought my mother and I together, and enabled
us to communicate, was an extremely embarrassing one for me. All
of my girlfriends were beginning to wear bras, and their mothers
had talked with them about it. I waited for my mother to say
something, but she never did. One day, I decided to wear one of my
sister's bras to school. At lunchtime, it began to bother me, so I took
it off, wrapped it in a scarf, and put it in my pocket. On the
playground that noon, one of the boys pulled my scarf out of my
pocket and discovered the bra. I was so shocked and upset that I
ran into the school leaving the boys running around the
playground, throwing the bra, and flying it on the flagpole. When
the principal learned of this, and found out who it belonged to, I
was called into the office. She told me that it was a terrible thing
and that I didn't realize how serious it was. I was to tell my mother
and then report back to her.
The one thing that sticks out in my mind (eighth grade boys' health
class) regarded masturbation. The teacher stated never to start
masturbating because it quickly developed into a habit of the
greatest difficulty to break. I assumed he was speaking from
personal experience. At any rate, that was one piece of advice I
chose not to follow. I have had feelings of guilt about masturbation
ever since I first did it.