Subject: Sex Education Can Sometimes Be Extremely Explicit 
Date: Published: 2/20/92 (80 lines)
Source: Wall Street Journal. Copyright Dow Jones & Co. Inc.

    Sex Education Can Sometimes Be Extremely Explicit
    ----
    By Sonia L. Nazario

    Sex education once meant gender-segregated classes showing
 film strips teaching boys about personal hygiene and giving
 girls a primer on menstruation.  Things have changed.
    Consider Robert Selverstone's "Human Sexuality"
 high-school class for 11th and 12th graders in Westport,
 Conn.  Mr. Selverstone uses rubberized male models, giving
 students of both sexes in the elective class a chance to
 practice fitting a condom on both a flaccid and erect penis.
 He passes around an intrauterine device and other
 contraceptives so teens can become comfortable handling them.
 His course also delves into communication between the sexes,
 abortion and homosexuality.
    "If we are teaching about genitals, it's appropriate for
 students to see this," says Mr. Selverstone, whose classes
 couldn't be more opposite those of Sex Respect and other
 abstinence-only curricula.  He adds:  "Vows of abstinence break
 more frequently than contraceptives."
    While some school districts are content with the
 abstinence approach, many others are adopting ever-more
 explicit sex-education courses.  Some schools teach
 "outercourse," methods of having sex with a partner without
 danger of disease or pregnancy.  Pilot courses in Denver and
 San Diego funded by the Centers for Disease Control take
 students on "condom hunts" to drug stores.  New York schools
 hand out condoms; Falmouth, Mass., puts condom vending
 machines in high schools.
    Advocates say past sex education courses have failed to
 curb teen sexuality or significantly boost contraceptive use
 because they were too little, too late.  Although most schools
 now have sex education, the classes are generally limited to
 high-school anatomy primers -- at an age when more than half
 the adolescents have already had sex.  Students average only
 38.7 hours of sex education by their high-school graduation,
 says the Alan Guttmacher Institute, a research group.  Only
 10% get "comprehensive" sex education; and while most courses
 discuss abstinence, less than one in 10 AIDS classes shows
 how to use or obtain a condom, the Sex Information and
 Education Council of the U. S. says.
    The council, together with representatives of the American
 Medical Association, the National Education Association and
 14 other major groups, last October issued sweeping
 sex-education guidelines.  They advocate that sex education
 begin in kindergarten and continue through graduation -- an
 approach schools in such cities as Alexandria, Va., and
 Irvington, N. J., already have adopted.  The guidelines include
 topics such as parenthood, sexual abuse and abstinence, but
 they also broach subjects seldom taught in public schools:
    -- Teaching teens they can enjoy sexual pleasure without
 intercourse.
    -- Teaching that sexual fantasies involving forbidden
 things are common.
    -- Teaching early in elementary school exactly how
 intercourse takes place.
    -- Teaching that homosexual love relationships can be as
 fulfilling as heterosexual relationships.
    Not surprisingly, such approaches engender opposition.
 Last November, parents in Plano, Texas, forced the school
 district to abandon a 10-step lesson in biology class on how
 to use a condom.  But last month, 700 parents and students
 ventured out on a rainy Texas night to attend a board meeting
 where 177 stood in line to speak.  "What if one child gets
 AIDS because he doesn't know how to use a condom?  "  one board
 member asked.  The board reinstated the lesson but without a
 lesson in which a condom was unrolled over a test tube.
    "The only thing kids need to know is that there is no such
 thing as safe sex," fumes Marilyn Statler, a Plano parent who
 will ask that her daughter sit in the library when the
 lessons are given.

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