The kids are getting sex education in school--like, getting it repeatedly and ongoingly--and Sean and I are being reminded (repeatedly and ongoingly) how comparatively lame sex education is in their previous school in Utah. And in the being-reminded, we are also thinking about how the, um, climate of U.S. prudishness (shall we say), has made us more prudish than we'd realized.
First of all, the fact that human sexuality even exists as a school subject here in the elementary grades? This was surprising to us. In Utah, the kids get a "maturation" talk once a year starting in the fifth grade; this little lecture does not address humans having sex at all and is NOT a co-ed experience. The girls get a menstruation tutorial; apparently the boys get a heads up on wet dreams (though in a sex-mention-free way that is a little mystifying); for both girls and boys, mood swings and the need for deodorant are emphasized.
There's the fact that here, the topic is covered so comprehensively, as part of biology. Wilhelmina has done an illustrated poster of fetal development; other classmates covered menstruation, puberty, and conception. She has written reports on contraception and sexually transmitted diseases (and pasted some really grotesque Google images into her reports.) Talking about this this morning, Wilhelmina told me that during the maturation talks in Utah, if a student asked a question about sex, the teachers were required to abstain from answering it.
Sex ed here includes discussion about the social and cultural context. Leafing through an official Chiapas state textbook, I see that the sex/gender distinction is covered in Chapter 1; Chapter 2 explains the unfair "doble moral" (double standard) that results in girls having more "prohibiciones" related to their bodies and their sexual conduct; Chapter 3 includes a section titled, "Sexual rights are human rights."
Finally, sex ed here includes discussion of pleasure and love. Both kids have been officially reassured about the thorough okayness of masturbation; as a result of recent lectures Oscar has been talking about how the loving feelings that a person has for a spouse or boyfriend/girlfriend are different from the ones you might have for a "regular" friend. He's completely convinced of this.
However, he's still unclear about his assignment for Thursday...he says he's supposed to find out some stuff about sexuality (from the Internet? A book? Interviews??) and bring it with him to class. Driving the kids home from school on Friday and pondering Oscar's assignment dilemma, I suggested to Sean that perhaps we could locate a copy of "The Joy of Sex" in a bookstore. Sean's idea was a Spanish-language "Kuma Satra."
"Kama Sutra?" I said.
Wilhelmina sighed audibly from the backseat.
We've got a lot to learn.
Reading "The Joy of Sex" is a time-honored and effective way of learning the ropes--although, at the time I read it, having my parents offer it to me would have resulted in one of those episodes where I felt blushingly humiliated for reasons I couldn't explain. Much better to "hide" it on a low shelf in a corner where it can be discovered and inspected at leisure...
ReplyDeleteAlthough, if homework is due, I guess you have to expedite.
And, well, as Sean and I were discussing, the advantage of the Joy of Sex is that it's mostly pictures, so the Spanish vocabulary shouldn't present much of a difficulty for Oscar.
Delete(Wilhelmina would probably not approve of this kind of homework help, though.)
Wow! I think I even learned something today!
ReplyDeleteGrowing up here in Utah, I can say that sex ed here is practically non-existent until Jr. High (at least it was for me).
My education was a bit worse; my mother wouldn't sign the permission slip letting me attend because they taught about contraceptives. She likened it to giving a child a loaded gun; they would eventually want to pull the trigger. My education consisted of sitting in the library for a week, along with Amol, the foreign exchange student from India.
A loaded gun? I like the analogy....
Delete(Imagine if you and Amol had discovered a copy of "The Joy of Sex" somewhere in the library. Or the Kama Sutra (maybe Amol could have provided the social and cultural context for that one)!)
I looked him up online (I haven't seem him since high school), and, not surprisingly, he has a PhD in computer science and is now working in New York. Good for him, keeping busy! Ma Mama always said, "Idle hands are the devil's tools".
DeleteBoth as a grandmother and a teacher, I was fascinated to hear about sex-ed in another culture. I didn't realize quite how far behind we were in the U.S. How fabulous to have some of these issues squared away so early. The MT sex-ed program sounds similar to Utah's (begins mostly in gr. 5 and segregates the boys and girls); however, both sexes do get information about sexual development for their sex and the opposite sex. The big no-no though is coitus, and if a student asks a question relating to that, the teacher has to refrain from answering it and suggest the student talk to a parent. Fat chance of that.
ReplyDelete