Did anyone have to take a health course in high school? What do they teach? Is it more about diseases and sexual health, or more about healthy eating and staying away from drugs? Or is it all of that? My high school doesn't offer health, but I'm writing a story that involves high school health curricula... Thanks!
It's been a few years since health, but I remember it pretty well. A chapter a week would have a different topic so one week it would be about the downside to smoking, the next week would be about STD's, and so on. The curriculum toward later in the year mostly centered upon heterosexual sex and the different types of birth control for both men and women. They also focused a lot on teen pregnancy. The class would have to take care of a robotic baby for a weekend that would track how good or bad the couple took care of it (feed it when it needed feeding, changing it's diaper, holding its neck properly, ect). If you were careless with it, you would fail the semester. I, naturally, took the alternative assignment, which was just to write a paper on something that you found interesting in the class. As far as homosexual or bisexual information was concerned, there was none, which is a shame. Hope this helps.
Note my experience took place years and years ago... We had health classes at least one quarter to one semester every :***: year from 7th grade-9th grade (roughly 12/13 years old - 14/15 years old). I don't recall exactly what was taught year to year; however, certain things kept coming back like a weed you can't kill. The two I remember: Self esteem. Drugs/alcohol I suspect both these issues were issues the school district considered critical, and pushed hard on the SLO ("Student Learning Objectives"). As for sex ed... Sex ed is undoubtedly controversial. Today (2015) there are schools that teach "abstinence only." In my school, they'd send a form home with us that allowed the parents to opt their son/daughter out of sex ed. Sex ed was pretty much limited to straight sex--no hint that gay people even existed--and pretty much locked into the reproductive mentality. I will give them credit, though, for covering contraceptives. One note about sex ed: the coverage varies wildly... I heard of gay people giving talks in some very liberal schools in the 1970s. And in some schools today, it would be: abstinence only, you have sex outside marriage, you will die of some horrible STD!!!!!
My health class was actually part of gym. As in Mondays was health, every other day of the week was gym. There was a little bit of everything--diet, exercise, STDs, sex, drugs, smoking, alcohol. My sex ed unit was actually pretty good. Abstinence was, of course, encouraged but we also learned about different forms of birth control. Including some methods that are popular but don't actually work. There wasn't anything about homosexuality (that I remember, it was freshman year and I didn't know that other sexualities even existed) but given that I lived in a predominantly Christian area that wouldn't have an out gay student for another two years that isn't at all surprising. Given that my school was actually quite advanced for the area, I wouldn't be surprised if the current class has a section on sexuality.
In my high school, it was different things each year. Freshman year, it was abstinence and a little bit of eating healthy. Sophmore year, no health just driving. That was the year you took the written exam for your driver's license. Junior year, was basic safety training, like CPR and stuff. Then senior year, was the safe sex/abstinence, pregnancy, STD year. You had to watch The Miracle of Birth video and a video of a c-section. You had to do a project on an STD. And you had to make a plan and an expense sheet for the first year a child is alive. Basically, it was to scare you into not having sex or at least to use a condom (which we did not talk about).
I have my first health class this year, but we haven't really done anything yet. My guidance counselor is teaching it and all we've done is meditate so far because... stress levels? I dunno. But we're supposed to cover alcohol and drugs this winter, but we won't get to sex ed until after spring break.
Mine was just two weeks of gym class. We learned about drugs, health issues related to obesity, CPR, pregnancy And STI's. And it was like "if you have homosexual sex, wear a condom". So not much detail there :lol:
I guess it would have to depend on what school you went to. The one where I took health class didn't really cover sex ed. The teacher barely touched on it and covered more aspects of biology than things like safe sex, etc...
When we went over sex it was procreation, STD/STIs, prevention, abstinence, and emotions. The woman who came in talked about all these different things we have now to prevent pregnancy and STDs. There was also an abstinence speaker who told us that it was best if sex was done in marriage. Whatever their personal feelings on the queer community were, they stressed on being as professionally neutral as possible. Most of what they went through was applicable to most sexual and romantic relationships. After the abstinence speaker was done, I went up to him and asked, "What if you are aromantic?" I had to explain what "aromantic" was to him, and did not get a very good reply. But I could tell he was honestly curious and was considerate. It was kind of nice. Apparently he was used to getting questions and confessions after his talks. He told us during his talk that people had come up to him about gay sex, gender, marriage, pressure, asexuality, past sexual abuse, ect.. Apparently I was the first to come up to him afterwards on the subject of "what if I don't get romantic feelings and marriage makes me uncomfortable".
Lol, its been a long time but my health classes revolved around several topics, my personal favourites are: het-sex: always take protection, practice putting condoms on bananas, and topics like abortion, STDs/STIs and don't do it because "doing it results in pregnancy and you don't want to ruin your life, girls do you?" ... We never touched upon homosexual sex or relationships; and there was no suggestion to do so. =/ We did have to do a project on a specific STD/STIs. Drugs: We spent TWO weeks on different classes of drugs; we received different pamphlets of classes of drugs, and was told that they were bad (ironic thing was that most of the class were already on some of the drugs...so I don't think that lesson worked as well as the health visitor hoped). Self esteem: That one was great -- we had to fill out a questionnaire about how our self esteem was ranked at. And then we got a sticker with a smiley face on to make ourselves feel better about ourselves. And we did something on alcohol but it was so brief. We did have a guest speaker who was a recovering alcoholic.
Mostly focused on first aid. Bandaging wounds, CPR, working a defibrillator. They had a very "Sex is BAD" view. "Sex is for when you're married.... or maybe never! Look at all these horrible diseases you will get if you have sex." Being on the fringes of the Bible Belt. They taught abstinence rather than safe sex. Which has been shown to be related to higher rates of STD transmission and unwanted pregnancy. But that's none of my business. I don't think the word "condom" was used once.
In my school they mostly talk about self-esteem, personality stuff for part of the year. They usually cover the reproductive system, and like others have said it's mostly "you will have sex and have your life ruined." But you know what really ticks me off? The fact that we did a unit on HIV/AIDS and there was no mention of homosexuality at all. Seriously, people are going to keep getting this horrible disease until educators pull their heads of of their :***: and realize that people doing anal sex (no pun intended! :icon_redf) need to be aware of the possible consequences. Maybe they just think gay lives are worth less, I wouldn't be surprised... :dry:
