When my daughter was in second grade, she brought home a bag of books at her reading level. The bag was in the shape of a manila envelope, but made of a durable fabric. Some nights the bag was yellow, other nights it was orange. Some nights she read the books inside alone, sometimes aloud and other times I read them to her. We had to get in our 20 minutes every night so that she could fill out her monthly form and be recognized for her work.
It’s funny what we remember. I wonder what my daughter’s memories of “baggie books” are. For the most part, I only remember the bags and the time we spent together reading. And then I also remember the one time when I thought that I was protecting her little being—although I now know that I was just trying to protect myself.
I don’t remember what time of the year it was, or if the kids were studying life cycles. I just remember sitting down with her and opening a book about frogs. Within that book, the frogs mated. And it wasn’t just the word mated, there was a picture of frogs mating. Yeah, a picture of one frog on the back of another frog.
Immediately, I reached out to the teacher. Then, I talked to the principal about how I didn’t feel it was appropriate for my child to be exposed to this in the second grade. I believed that she should be learning her math facts and how to form sentences. Actually, I’m not sure I was that rational; although I do remember both giving me grace as I stated my opinion.
My guess is that at that time I pulled from my experience in elementary school (seeing that I was such a healthy example of an adult) to make assumptions about how my daughter should also be taught about animals. By second grade I also knew that there were these creatures called frogs; that their lives began in a jelly-like substance from which tadpoles came to be. These creatures were magical because after about six weeks, they’d grow legs and lose their tails and become frogs, moving from water to land, a herbivore to a carnivore.
But no one told me exactly how the jelly-like substance came to be in the first place. Mating, or sex, was a pretty taboo idea in my world. First, it was reserved for married people. Second, it was “sacred”. Third, it leads to diseases. Fourth, my parents had alone time in the shower.
I didn’t know it at the time, but today I am so grateful for what public education did for me as I grew into my adult body. As I became a teenager, my mother was too ashamed to tell me what PMS meant, let alone tell me how to take care of myself during my period. It was well into adulthood that I completely figured that out.
If it weren’t for my teachers in the sixth grade, I may have struggled a bit more. Girls were in one classroom (it was a small school) and boys were in another. The teachers showed us pictures of our reproductive organs, and those of the other sex, talked to us about the changes our bodies would be going through in the upcoming years and answered any questions.
These topics were reinforced in seventh and eighth grade, and in health class in high school. Of course, every topic was very sterile, factual, scientific, and sexual intercourse was not promoted. Abstinence was the name of the game (even though many were sexually active). Still, even without access to the internet on our own personal devices, we found Cosmopolitan in the checkout aisle of every grocery store and talked about what we learned over lunch.
People my age should write a book called “Everything I Need to Know About Sex, I Learned from Cosmopolitan.”
And, everything I learned about checking myself for cancer came from my sex ed. classes. I know the benefits of a PAP smear and how to detect changes in my breast tissue.
Today, at 42-years old, I am grateful for this, even though it was the minimum.
I’m also pretty disgusted at myself for what I did when my daughter was in second grade. My thought was twofold: first, this is not how I was raised and second, if we talk to our children about sex or reproduction, they will be more inclined and curious about something they should be holding close to their chest. And so, I believed that I was protecting my child.
What I know now is that not engaging in or providing them opportunities to learn about something almost every single creature on their planet does or is (a being who has sexual organs and is a sexual being) I’ve also left them lost to figure out what their bodies are going through and will go through on their own.
Just the other night I was talking to my daughter about breast exams, reminding her to do them every month. I asked her if she knew how, and she said that in school the teacher told them to silently read that paragraph in a book, but they didn’t have to if they didn’t want to.
Through the teacher’s direction, she felt as though she actually shouldn’t be reading the material. She recalls being told that the breast and prostate material is “super uncomfortable and funny to read about” so it was the student’s choice to do so or not.
I’ve heard many, many stories about how sex-ed is non-existent, more of a pledge of abstinence. Are we so uncomfortable with our bodies that we can’t even teach children how to check their breasts for disease? Every single human has breasts, and they all need to be checked for cancer regularly.
Just as the most important thing teachers did for me during my time in school was teaching me about my body, one of the most important things I ever did for my daughter was walk into my in-laws house with a box of tampons, placing them on the counter. In that moment, she saw that I was not ashamed of the awesome things my body does every month, and that she could also have conversations with me about her cycle. This is has opened the door for really impactful discussions.
I’m certain that my daughter doesn’t remember the frog book. But she does remember the “Kool-Aid activity” where students passed an “STD” from one to another, not really understanding what the STD was, how it affects an individual or how to prevent it; the kids just knew that their kool-aid was now the color of their classmates.
The April 2022 edition of Mahomet-Seymour Superintendent Lindsey Hall’s “Bulldog Bulletin” reiterates this approach to sex education.
“Our Board of Education recently voted NOT to adopt the new National Sex Education Standards for instruction in our Health classes. We’ve gotten lots of questions about this, and our Health curriculum will not be changing in this particular area of instruction.”
(If you missed that vote, it’s because it was in the consent agenda under “press 108”.)
“Sexuality Education has always been optional for students taking Health class. Prior to this unit of instruction beginning, if you have a student in Health class at MSJH or MSHS, you will receive notice from the teacher about this instruction. If you wish to ‘opt out’ your child, you are welcome to do so by communicating with the teacher. Alternative assignments will be developed.”
This was witnessed again during the April 19 Mahomet-Seymour School Board meeting when staff danced around what was taught in class: making sure that the standard of teaching students about the dangers of vaping and opioids, but noting that if parents want their child to receive sexual education outside of these approaches, they might be able to enroll their student in an afterschool BLAST class.
As a parent, I certainly cannot look to a school to educate my child. I mean, if I want to make sure they use capital letters, I need to teach them myself. If I want to make sure that they know about the end of slavery, I need to teach them myself. If I want to make sure that they understand how to divide, I need to teach them myself. And if I want to make sure that they understand biology, then I need to teach them myself. Ultimately, it is my responsibility to educate my child appropriately.
It is also my responsibility to ensure that my children are more educated and healthier than I was or am. The reality of this has been that I am not the one teaching most of the time; I’m the one listening and learning and growing as they help to open my eyes, mind and heart to different views and new questions or information.
So, why do I remember the frog book? Because I, the adult, was uncomfortable with it. Me. I was and am the one with the problem. It was outside of my comfort zone. And that is my problem to deal with.
In the same way that drug education programs help introduce the risks of drug use to children, oftentimes, also helping them develop solutions to navigate situations that could be high-pressure, comprehensive sex education programs reduce the rates of sexual activity, sexual risk behaviors (eg, number of partners and unprotected intercourse), sexually transmitted infections, and adolescent pregnancy. These results are stronger in communities that embrace these efforts.
Age-appropriate comprehensive sexuality education (which is very different from sexualized education) helps children and young people understand their changing bodies and feelings, and develop safe, healthy, satisfying relationships with others. In later years, it also helps them identify life-threatening diseases in time to get treatment.
I don’t believe that educating my children about drugs will turn them into drug abusers in the same way that I don’t believe that teaching my children about their bodies will turn them into anything other than what they will become: humans.
Instead I understand the importance of sex education within our public and private schools. The reality is that I, along with my siblings, grew into our adult bodies, whether we were educated about them or not. In them, we write sentences and solve math problems, when appropriate. Even in these bodies that work to satisfy our obligations, there are three of us still get our periods 30 years later, each of us are raising children (because we had sex) and all of us are approaching the age where we need to have mammograms, colonoscopies, and a host of other tests as our bodies once again change. Quite honestly, I don’t use math a whole lot, but I certainly take care of my body every single day.
Today, I don’t look at the topic of mating (or sex) the same way I did 14 years ago. I believe that there are appropriate ways to talk about how creatures reproduce, how families are formed and how people identify to second grade students. I also believe that we do more damage to children, who become adults, in not openly talking about what our bodies do, need and even desire (at some point) just because it is something that makes the adults in the room uncomfortable for a moment or two.
