They Won’t Know Until They Learn

He didn't know it was bad until I taught him. I can still remember being afraid, cringing as this child told me what was happening at home, and looking into his eyes and seeing that he had no idea this was wrong. No one taught him. Yet, he experienced it just like other little kids I grew up with and watched grow up. An adult stealing his innocence and this child being saddled with the burden of having to deal with the loss of something precious behind closed doors because he couldn't say anything to the adults around him.

Many teachers have this story. The story of learning that one of their students are being sexually abused, and trying to navigate the waters of what to say when. Even without the sinisterness of abuse, kids ask sexual questions that make even the toughest adult squirm at the thought of this caterpillar becoming a fully grown butterfly (or moth if you must be technical). When asked why touching in certain parts feels good or how babies are made, adult brains clam up. I hate this. As a child who was often asking all of these questions, the lies were more frustrating than the untruths and I could've saved the internet a lot of work if the adults around me had just been straight with me. This is why I would not mind being a sex ed teacher.

Our bodies are innately sexual. That's the name of the game. If we weren't sexual, Adam and Eve would just be the names of biblical fertilizer. Yet, at a certain age, we give this half-assed "Birds and Bees" talk that basically says, "you're growing up and I am terrified". In my grandfather's day, The Talk was basically just validation for you trying things out with the girls down the street (or boys if you were in a closet or a Vietnamese barrack). In my dad's day, you found your dad's girly magazines and crunched some numbers. In my day, we just google everything, and before Safe Search, parents could walk in on familiar blue site with yellow writing and be traumatized for life.

The internet taught me more about sex than school did. Though my parents intervened, I was still not taught about masturbation, homosexuality, or various kinks and fetishes. It wasn't until ninth grade, when my third sex ed teacher of the school year, after having the carrot of retirement pulled from him once again, gave up and told us what we really wanted to hear. By the first day, he had earned all of our trust. Students who would skip every class wouldn't dare miss a day of Coach Marks' antics. Any question from us was readily and truthfully answered. I learned more in that class than I did in any other sex class I would take, even the one in college (so far). That honesty can't just come from a teacher who is ready to give his higher-ups a reason to fire him. Had I had his class earlier, I would've been able to navigate the world better. I would've avoided a lot of bad relationships, scary porn, and long, confusing weeks trying to decipher men that I don't remember the name of.

It's important to be truthful to kids when they grow up. It's important to normalize at least talking about sex with kids so that many issues like abuse, break-ups, teen pregnancies, and sexuality can be dealt with in a better, timely manner. The Gen Xers and Millenials opened a door of "what if things don't have to be this way" but are taking things too far. We have to educate first before asking people who they are or what they identify as, and that's the piece that keeps getting missed. Teaching has to be parent-friendly (since kids understand most of what is thrown at them and oftentimes any predisposed opinions come from their environment) and objective rather than based on opinions or religion or politics.

If we expect a math teacher to teach math objectively and expect a literature teacher to focus on the books, then why is it so unrealistic to let a sex-ed teacher teach objectively about sex and let a kid form their opinions on their own? Isn't having regulated teaching better than having the next generation try and pull meaning and understanding from pornos and bullshit that politicians say?