Wednesday, January 30, 2013

Let's Talk About Sex (Education)...

sex education in Mexico - lacasadeleslie.com

Can you believe it's the last week of January, already?  Not only is this the last week of the first month of the new year, it's also the last week of Hope's extended Christmas vacation.  One of the perks of being a high school student in Mexico is a two month Christmas vacation.

Last year, I didn't know if Hope was even going to be able to attend high school this school year.  And now she is days away from starting her second semester of 10th grade, where all new books, subjects, and teachers await her.  I never thought we'd get to this point in time.

As thankful that I am that Hope was finally able to attend high school, there was a short period of time when I wasn't sure I wanted Hope to attend high school after all. 


You see, for the first seven weeks of the school year, the 10th graders were only given three subjects to study: Learning Abilities, Science Comprehension, and Human Sexuality.  These subjects would only be covered during those first seven weeks, after which they'd start their regular curriculum with subjects like math and Spanish.  The most memorable of the three subjects was of course Human Sexuality, especially the homework assignments.

I don't consider myself a prude at all.  Sex is a natural, beautiful thing that I'm not afraid to talk about.  I know that someday my sweet, innocent kiddies are going to grow up and have sex.  I've had "the talk" with my older kiddies and answered their questions, honestly and to the best of my ability.  And I'm all for kids these days learning about sexual responsibility, safe sex, birth control and all that good stuff.  I just wasn't prepared for how it was presented to my young, impressionable daughter who was only 14 at the time, unlike most of her classmates who were already 15 and 16 years old.

The first assignment was to watch a documentary called, "Why is sex fun?"  I'm not gonna lie, my first reaction upon leaning about that first assignment was, "Oh hell no!"  I thought a Human Sexuality class was to  educate and inform the kids and teach them to act responsibly, not encourage them to go out and have sex because it's FUN.

I watched the documentary first, to make sure Hope wasn't going to watch porn or something.  Turns out the documentary was more of a scientific explanation of what happens in the brain, our blood stream and the rest of the body at the moment of orgasm.  Not too bad.  But the documentary could use a different title.

Another assignment was to list 10 forms of birth control.  Again, I'm no prude, and a firm believer in safe sex, but come on, we are talking about my 14 year old little girl.  Within seconds I rattled off a list of what I consider to be acceptable forms of birth control:
  1. Birth control pills
  2. Abstinence
  3. Condoms & spermicides
  4. Abstinence
  5. Intrauterine device
  6. Abstinence
  7. Abstinence
  8. Abstinence
  9. Abstinence
  10. Abstinence
Can you blame a mom for trying?  Eventually, I gave Hope a real list of 10 different forms of birth control, that only mentioned abstinence once.

Later that week,  Hope had to write reports on each of the 10 forms of birth control we listed.  I thought that should be a safe enough task since she'd be using Wikipedia as her main source of information.  I was wrong!  Turns out, Wikipedia in espaƱol includes some pretty racy (and graphic) photos, illustrations and paintings.  Not exactly what I wanted my child to be looking at.  But I handled it with as much grace as I could muster.

Another assignment was to compile a list of sex toys.  Yes, you read that correctly...SEX TOYS!!!  There was no freakin' way I was going to let Hope Google "sex toys"!  So I gave her a list of the tamest sex toys I could think of, all the while hoping and praying that she didn't ask me how I knew about these things.  Hope must have felt the same way, because all she kept saying while writing the list down was, "Ew! I don't even want to know how or why you know about these things!"

Those seven weeks were filled with assignments regarding every aspect of human sexuality imaginable, that a lot of times pushed me way outside of my comfort zone, especially when it came to explaining it all to my little girl.  But knowledge is power and I just had to keep reminding myself that it's better for her to learn about this stuff now and with the right information.

But there was one assignment that pushed me over the edge.

"Mom, guess what our assignment is for this week?"

"Do I even want to know?"

"Don't worry, it's not bad!  We just have to look through the Kama Sutra and write about 25 sexual positions."

Considering all of the other assignments Hope had brought home in the past 6 weeks, I shouldn't have been as shocked or surprised by this particular assignment.  But I was and it led to one of my Ricky Ricardo-like outbursts...

"Nothing bad?! Oh my freakin' God!!!!  Are you serious??!  What is your teacher thinking?  Is he insane?  Who in there right mind would have a bunch of horny and hormonal teenagers flipping through the Kama Sutra?  No wonder there are so many pregnant teenagers around here!  Is this why I fought so hard to get you into school?  Mira que tiene cosa...."

I marched into the shop and demanded that Hubby drive up to the high school, so we could give the campus coordinator/principal who was teaching the class a piece of our minds.  Hubby was just as ticked off when I filled him in on the details of Hope's homework assignment.  Just as Hubby was about to start the truck, Hope, who was watching us from our front door, burst into uncontrollable laughter.  Evil, doubled over, tears streaming down her face, on the verge of rolling on the floor kind of laughter.

Bwahahahaha!

Hubby and I weren't as amused, but thank goodness she was only joking about that final Human Sexuality assignment.  I'm just glad it's over and I really hope the second semester starts with good old-fashioned subjects like reading, writing, and arithmetic.










6 comments:

  1. Wow! I had sex ed in high school but we never talked about sex toys and positions.

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  2. I know, right? I went to a Christian high school, where our sex ed. class was mostly about how sex before marriage was a sin and that we'd all go to hell if we did it. Times have really changed. LOL :P

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  3. I get they need to be educated and knowledge is power. Sex toys and why sex is fun is taking it a bit far. I'm not sure I would have handled it as well as you! What a trooper, Leslie!

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  4. LOVE Hopes sense of humour lol lol. Your faces must have been a picture lol. I can just imagine lol sorry still laughing at your daughters joke on you.
    On the other hand I guess my idea of sex education is way behind the times. I would never have thought that sex education would include a list of sex toys or a film titled in such a way; although I am sure it caught the teens attention. Sadly the sex education maybe needs to be much earlier as many young girls here are already pregnant or mothers at Hopes age. I truly believe in giving kids the facts about sex, diseases, family control, etc.; but would never have thought to include sex toys in that education. Shows my age I guess; but then again you will never get pregnant from an inanimate sex toy, so maybe they have a good idea there. Who knows.

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  5. This is crazy, Leslie. I'm sitting over here on the East Coast shuddering at the thought of having our son come home with these kinds of assignments. There must be a reason why I visited this a.m. to find this post, because just yesterday, as our son worked on his spelling words in the kitchen, he asked, "Mami, how come I'm so much like you and Daddy? How was I made?" Not prepared to answer that question! He's only 10. Jeepers.

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  6. Just curious, what age do kids get out of school in Mexico? I had this content in college (18-19) but I could see if the kids aren't going off to college it could be helpful. Though I think 14 is too young for some of the content!

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