A few days ago my younger daughter came home from school chuckling about The Talk they had given there. She thought it rather funny in material and presentation, especially in light of how the three of us typically talk about those issues. My older daughter explained that the district now has several versions of that special event. Once in elementary, once in middle school and then finally in high school. The elementary version my youngest just attended deals predominantly with (for her) the female system and things like having a period. It struck me that my kids are now getting the talk from various sources; home, school, church, media (a lot of TV is passively presenting a rather warped version of The Talk almost all of the time). Later I’ll let my kids weigh in with their perspectives of that “right of passage” and I certainly want to look at the potentially competing sources of this information. But most immediately this sparked some memories for me.
When I was a kid I only got one version of the talk. My parents were not comfortable talking to me about sex. The churches we attended so no point in broaching that topic because good kids weren’t doing any of that stuff anyway. There wasn’t much TV (heck we didn’t have one until I was well into elementary school and it only received 3 channels, less with bad weather). So The Talk came from school. Any blanks left from that and my reading had to be covered by eaves-dropping in the locker room.
All-in-all, the Talk at my school wasn’t very useful, but that might not have been the point. To paraphrase Patches O’Houlihan from “Dodgeball”: The purpose of the talk is confusion, misunderstanding and humiliation.
When that special event occurred at my school, just before high school, I arrived embarrassedly trailing my father who had not said so much as a word to me on this subject in my 14 years on earth. We sat stoically next to each other to watch a short, amazingly poorly made movie that told me about my gear (so that’s a penis, who knew) and never to use it. How one might use it was dutifully ignored (I don’t believe there was even mention of masturbation, much less what else one might do with this stuff). There was talk of venereal disease, but not of how one might contract such painful maladies, and a few other vague concepts such as male urges, wet dreams, etc. But condoms, pregnancy and how the former might help avoid the latter were absent.
The principle and health teacher spoke in unspecific terms. There was nervous laughter. And I left having not bonded with dear old dad nor learned much of anything that would serve me later in life.
It occurs to me now that issues of anatomy weren’t really useful then and certainly are not now. There are countless sources on the internet of both detailed and “gross” anatomy. As for mechanics, experience has taught me most people can figure that stuff out on their own given the right circumstances. And talking to kids about having a period and not to be embarrassed is, frankly, embarrassing for most of them. What’s more, for many children there is no way to avoid how uncomfortable their classmates will make them as their bodies change.
I’m pretty sure the talk my daughter just received didn’t do much for her. I try not to be like my parents and actually talk to my kids about what sex is and my feelings about them and it. That will probably get fleshed out (pardon the pun) in later posts. But for now, I’d like to know what schools could be doing (if they should be doing anything at all) with The Talk? can anyone give details of a school doing this right?
