Sex education from the religious. What could possibly go wrong?

robindch

Enough about front and back bums!

Instead, let's turn to sex education in religious schools in Ireland:

http://thedailyedge.thejournal.ie/irish-sex-ed-stories-1907215-Jan2015/

A Reader wrote:

In religion class in 2nd Yr our teacher told us the average penis was 12in, then drew the male genitals on the board with three balls

A Reader wrote:

We definitely went through the mechanics of it in Biology, but in 6th Year we had a lady come in and all I can remember about it was that she had seven or eight kids herself, and that you should always go to the toilet as soon as you need to, otherwise you’ll get cystitis.

A Reader wrote:

Sex ed in my Irish, Catholic girls school - there wasn't any. None. Nothing. Those pages of the religion book were always glued together.

A Reader wrote:

[We got] none at all. I don’t even think we got to that chapter in biology. We (the girls) did get taken out of class when we were about 16 and had our periods explained to us. You know, in case we’d been wondering what had been going on down there the last few years.

A Reader wrote:

We had a single sex ed class run by a nun who showed a video of another nun in a studio from the 70s saying never have sex.

A Reader wrote:

“Some boys may have penises.” First year in a convent school in 2001 by a 70-year-old woman. We didn’t hear another word because we were laughing so hard after hearing that!

A Reader wrote:

We got a talk about periods and tampons in 3rd year (aged 14/15) and we were also shown a video of an abortion including some kind of Hoover type device being used. I only did science up to junior cert and though we were shown diagrams we never got a talk and we learned more from our teacher who was on maternity leave for part of each of the three years we had her (“does she not know what’s causing it?” we wondered)
In 6th year (with a heavily pregnant girl in the class) we had a talk on chastity by some born again virgins from Canada who had been sexually active but regretted it and had decided to save themselves until marriage from then on in. They got a great reception. The first question they asked was “why do people have sex?” The hecklers shouted “exercise” at it went in like that for an afternoon!

etc :eek:

looksee

In the '60s in the UK I recall getting sex education classes - at least two talks in school, perfectly reasonable and straightforward, accurate stuff, all the anatomical stuff in biology (in a mixed class), and discussions and talks by a doctor and a woman who was a psychologist I think at the youth club I attended. We were all pretty fed up with sex education by the time we got to 15, they took all the mystery out of it

magicbastarder

i went to a standard NS and when we were in sixth class (i think - this was 1988 if so) they sent people in to talk to us about sex, a man and a woman, and they were actually fairly decent about it. we were able to write questions on paper and they'd read them and answer them; one kid asked 'what's the difference between a condom and a rubber glove?' and the guy (can't remember what organisation they were from) laughed and said 'the difference is what you use it for!'

magicbastarder

robindch wrote: »

(in one of the quotes) We definitely went through the mechanics of it in Biology, but in 6th Year we had a lady come in and all I can remember about it was that she had seven or eight kids herself, and that you should always go to the toilet as soon as you need to, otherwise you’ll get cystitis.

i've heard this too - that for women who suffer from cystitis, it can help prevent it by urinating after sex.

robindch

Anybody else got stories they'd like to share?

lazygal

I got fairly ok sex ed. In school there was a 'big talk' in sixth class. I went to a mixed school and we were all kept together for it. It was quite factual and no nonsense, apart from a silly video we all laughed at. I went to an all girls secondary school and got pretty ok sex ed there too. It was quite basic, menstruation, pregnancy, some talk about condoms etc. We covered it in science too.
The one thing that still angers me is when the local priest dropped into our classroom when I was in first year. One girl asked why it was wrong to use condoms and got a whole speech about not being allowed to put anything in the way of God's design for men and women. Then someone else said she was on the pill for painful periods and what did that matter as she wasn't having sex anyway. The priest repeated that it was a grave sin to be using anything that could prevent nature doing what it is meant to do. :mad::mad::mad::mad::mad::mad:
Thankfully the teachers were far more sensible.

magicbastarder

robindch wrote: »

Anybody else got stories they'd like to share?

i think ian brown's story beats all (pun unintended).

robindch

^^^ Who's Ian Brown?

magicbastarder

http://www.independent.ie/entertainment/television/tv-news/exstone-roses-frontman-ian-brown-taught-to-masturbate-by-tv-weatherman-30941773.html

Delirium

robindch wrote: »

Anybody else got stories they'd like to share?

Didn't receive any sex ed in school in the 90s beyond biology class.

silverharp

I had a holy ghost priest put his hand on my knee during a retreat around 3 rd year and ask me if i had any problems with masterbation, I said no. I'm beginning to wonder what would have happened if I said yes...

smacl

robindch wrote: »

Anybody else got stories they'd like to share?

Late 70s, Newpark co-ed, start of 2nd year. The year was assembled into the gym and given the talk. Near the end, the woman conducting the talk asked for a show of hand as to how many had started menstruating. About half the girls put up their hands. So did three of the lads, who withdrew them rapidly to a peel of laughter after figuring out they'd picked the word up wrong.

JaseBelleVie

I got "the talk" from my mum when I was about 12. Didn't understand a whole lot of what was being said (I was an innocent little thing).

Science class in secondary school gave us a good idea of the physiological in's and out's (pardon the pun) of reproduction and so on. Our teacher tried to scare the living sh*te out of us too by showing very graphic slides of male and female genitalia being ravaged by STI's and so on. Better than a cold shower. Doubt anyone in the class even dared to masturbate for a week!

SPHE in secondary school was also very informative and was very good. We had a great teacher for that. She was fairly young and "with it", so she knew that most of this stuff would be initially greeted with sniggers and giggles. But she pressed on and she was very neutral about it. Maybe realistic was a better word. She really stressed the need for condoms, birth control and so on. She didn't go the whole "DON'T HAVE SEX" route. She discouraged us from having sex so young, but seemed to accept that it was going to happen. So she really hammered home the idea of birth control and protecting ourselves from STI's.

Our SPHE teacher was great, now that I think of it. She got into some hot water with the school admin and with parents for trying to get condom machines installed in the senior toilets in the school. Her argument (that largely fell on deaf ears) was that she wasn't encouraging a school full of hormonal teenage boys to have sex, but rather she felt that if we were going to have sex, best to be prepared. After a lot of pressure from admin and the parents, she backed down. But I think she was absolutely spot on and was just looking out for her students.

Despite talks, school and progressive teachers, the single biggest educational influence on my sexual education was the internet. I had a problem down below for many years and I was always researching to try and find a non-invasive cure for it. This also led me to find out a lot about sex and all that there. Most of what I know about sex, the psychology of it, the physiology of it, etc. all comes from sex education sites. And no dirty jokes, please.

So yeah, I think I was a lucky one in that I got a very good sex education.

aidan24326

Is it still this bad though? Have we moved on at all to a stage where this stuff is taken seriously and is properly dealt with? It would be nice to think that at least some schools have moved into the 21st century.

Foe me, a convent-affiliated secondary school (though there was only a couple of nuns actually teaching there). The girls were sent off to one room with a female teacher, the lads to another with a male teacher. We wrote questions on a piece of paper and they all got put in a box, he then went through them and attempted to answer each one.

Overall it wasn't too bad relative to some of the stories I've heard, he did answer some of the questions in a way that could be described as passable, (and I'm being kind here, you could tell he felt really awkward and was unsuited to the job). I do however remember him describing oral sex as 'a disgusting act', whether or not he actually believed that. But it was really poor overall, awkward and badly handled, and felt like they were treating it as a nuisance to be gotten out of the way rather than any attempt at actually dealing with the issue.

eviltwin

I did leaving cert biology. Reproduction was the last topic we covered at the end of sixth year. The pages had been removed by our teacher at the start of 5th year and kept from us until we had covered the rest of the book. Before they were handed out the principal gave us a talk about how sex was only for marriage, sex outside marriage was a sin and we'd go straight to hell. When we got the pages someone had written on the top of the first page 'for married couples only'. That was the extent of my sex ed. That was 1995.

magicbastarder

JaseBelleVie wrote: »

Our SPHE teacher was great, now that I think of it. She got into some hot water with the school admin and with parents for trying to get condom machines installed in the senior toilets in the school.

what year was this?

magicbastarder

aidan24326 wrote: »

I do however remember him describing oral sex as 'a disgusting act'

was he referring specifically to fellatio, or oral sex in general?

JaseBelleVie

magicbastarder wrote: »

what year was this?

Not too long ago, but the school had a pretty strong Catholic ethos and so on. I couldn't believe it when it was happening, but there you go. Still runs strong in some places.

sbsquarepants

My girlfriends mother - who is basically the pope with tits (and big ones at that:D), volunteers to teach sex education to secondary school kids for some holy joe group or other. I've always found that quite bizzare.
I'd love to sit ion on one of her classes out of sheer morbid curiosity!

Going Strong

We had one, count it, one sex ed class in my all-boys community school so, technically not run by religious orders - early 1980's. The school sent out a letter explaining that there'd be such classes and that any parents not happy with this could withdraw their sons. I think a few did just that. The class consisted of an art teacher coming in, drawing an anatomically correct side view of both sets of reproductive organs, which took up the entire 40 minutes allotted. He then said something like "And there you have it." erased it all from the blackboard and walked out.

However, the school chaplain complained so we never had another class. Funny how said chaplain was all for upholding the Holy Mother Church's teachings when it came to filthy goings on of a sexual naughtiness nature but saw nothing wrong in breaching the confidentiality of the confession box by ratting out anyone fool enough to confess anything that broke school rules. He'd be off to the vice-principal with a list of names and 'crimes' as soon as he could get someone to confess to something.

aidan24326

magicbastarder wrote: »

was he referring specifically to fellatio, or oral sex in general?

Don't think cunnilingus was mentioned, cannot recall but doubt most of us knew anything about that at the time, and the teacher certainly wasn't going to bring it up voluntarily. So it was primarily fellatio yes, that putting your penis into a girl's mouth was a disgusting act not to be encouraged. But who knows whether he actually believed that or was just saying what he thought you're supposed to say.

It was a school with a strong catholic ethos so a subject like sex education was always going to be a tricky one. That was the early 90s and I'd hope things have moved on a bit now though I really wouldn't know. It would be encouraging to hear some good examples as well as the bad ones.

robindch

A religious friend of mine, in many ways a fantastic girl, used to teach sex-ed somewhere or other down the country some years ago - her line on sex was that "men are like microwaves, and women like ovens".

But when I prodded her on the topic, it turned out she thought that the microwave comment was related to men being finished with messy business of reproduction once they'd got their rocks off, while women were then stuck for nine months with the result. As opposed to the more - ahem - obvious meaning, with which it turned out she was grandly unfamiliar.

I'd love to have sat in on some of what could only have been the most cringworthy of sex-ed classes

robindch

aidan24326 wrote: »

So it was primarily fellatio yes, that putting your penis into a girl's mouth was a disgusting act not to be encouraged.

Reminds me of a girl in my sister's class in a convent school in Killarney, must have been around 20 years ago. She'd come into the class that morning saying that her new guy had asked if they could try some "french kissing" and she wasn't sure what it was, so her mates described a blow job.

Then, that lunchtime, the two young ones met and disappeared across the road, up a path and into a little copse of trees some distance away. A couple of minutes later, the guy appeared, sprinting down the path again, saying "Jesus! She's f*cking mental" to all her classmates who'd helpfully come out and sit on the school wall to see what would happen.

who the fug

silverharp wrote: »

I had a holy ghost priest put his hand on my knee during a retreat around 3 rd year and ask me if i had any problems with masterbation, I said no. I'm beginning to wonder what would have happened if I said yes...

I remember a Holy Ghost father who gave that talk to all the third years in the one I was in, think he moved after I left.

He was driven demented by us fifth years and our imaginary sex lives at confession.


Back on topic, only sex education was in biology.

Neyite

We were told to never sit on a boy's lap. Or if there was no alternative eg. getting a lift in a car (pre seat-belt enforcing) then at the very least we must put a newspaper, but preferably a phone book between our backsides and their laps. To avoid pregnancy.

This was early nineties, convent school.

rainbow kirby

Accord came in to my primary school when I was in 6th class and gave the periods and puberty talk, but said little to nothing about sex at that point. At secondary school, the only thing covered before the Junior Cert was what is covered in the JC science syllabus. In Transition Year we had a retired midwife giving a "Health Education" module, which was actually quite helpful (medically accurate and discussed contraception etc) but was too late for the girl who had a baby 7 weeks before the Junior Cert! Transition Year wasn't mandatory in my school so not everyone got that class.

I left school in 2002 - south Dublin all girls convent school.

Shrap

smacl wrote: »

Late 70s, Newpark co-ed, start of 2nd year. The year was assembled into the gym and given the talk. Near the end, the woman conducting the talk asked for a show of hand as to how many had started menstruating. About half the girls put up their hands. So did three of the lads, who withdrew them rapidly to a peel of laughter after figuring out they'd picked the word up wrong.

Early 80's, same school, start of 2nd year, ALL about menstruation. Probably the same woman speaker!

A wonderful science teacher (you probably know the one I mean smacl - mad about his record collection) told us in class later that year "I'm going off-curriculum today to teach you some sex education, because in this school, nobody else will". First time I ever heard of a female orgasm in spite of all the carefully bought books by my mother. Fair play that teacher.

smacl

Shrap wrote: »

Late 80's, same school, start of 2nd year, ALL about menstruation. Probably the same woman speaker!

A wonderful science teacher (you probably know the one I mean smacl - mad about his record collection) told us in class later that year "I'm going off-curriculum today to teach you some sex education, because in this school, nobody else will". First time I ever heard of a female orgasm in spite of all the carefully bought books by my mother. Fair play that teacher.

Quite a few great teachers there to be fair. We had our 30th reunion last weekend, and I'd forgotten how much I liked most of my class mates too. You should check out their facebook page for reunion events and maybe a few old faces.

stevejazzx

robindch wrote: »

But when I prodded her on the topic...

Smiley face missing, surely?
Wonderful euphemism nonetheless.

Shrap

smacl wrote: »

Quite a few great teachers there to be fair. We had our 30th reunion last weekend, and I'd forgotten how much I liked most of my class mates too. You should check out their facebook page for reunion events and maybe a few old faces.

Having carefully ignored the 20th reunion about 5 years ago in spite of facebook bombardment, don't think I'll make the 30th! I am good friends with one or two from there. That'll do me.

Brian Shanahan

robindch wrote: »

Anybody else got stories they'd like to share?

No, got absolutely no sex education in school. The closest we came to it was when old Max the Lion (a retired principal of the CBS) came in one day as relief, and we conned him into playing the sex ed video for us. We spent more time futzing with the wrist watch/video remote one of the lads got as a birthday present the same week than actually watching the video (though there was a picture of a naked woman up on screen for a long time).

Luckily for me, my parents were willing to teach me.

Edit: Actually have another story. Was playing a match one day at under 16s against a townie team (either Claughan or Christians forget which), and two dogs start going at it in the middle of the field, and the lad marking me turns around and asks, "what's that dog doing to the other dog?" I looked at him cock-eyed and said "What, you've never seen two dogs have sex before?"

One advantage of being a culchie, you pick up the mechanics of reproduction fairly early.

Skrynesaver

No formal sex ed in school, (all male, CBS, finished mid 80s), extremely catholic upbringing, put the details together through deciphering "dirty" jokes and reading.

I'm gathering that those who went through school after the AIDS epidemic got a better quality of sex education than those of us who went through school before AIDS was public knowledge.

eviltwin

Skrynesaver wrote: »

No formal sex ed in school, (all male, CBS, finished mid 80s), extremely catholic upbringing, put the details together through deciphering "dirty" jokes and reading.

I'm gathering that those who went through school after the AIDS epidemic got a better quality of sex education than those of us who went through school before AIDS was public knowledge.

Not at all. I was in school in the 90's and Aids was never mentioned.

purplecow1977

We had Accord in recently to discuss RSE with our 6th class. I have to say I found them excellent. Very accurate, clear and not in any way religious. The only reference they made was to having a baby that the best situation is when you are in a loving relationship.

Hotblack Desiato

I'm reminded of the sex education scene from Monty Python's The Meaning of Life, couldn't find a good clip on youtube except for one that needs a login so... meh. If you don't get the joke then just watch the film, and everything else they've ever done if you haven't already

CBS boys' school, 80s, don't recall anything sex-ed related in the school itself apart from biology class and, apropos of nothing at all, a 15-minute spittle-flecked rant against the evils of condoms from our English teacher at the start of English class one day

AIDS was definitely a thing then but was never mentioned. Buying condoms was to all intents and purposes illegal anyway

We did do a retreat in 6th year though, to some forsaken place in the midlands - middle of nowhere - an ex-Bord na Mona workers' accommodation block, it was like an abandoned East German army camp only colder. We were there for 2 nights I think, split into groups of 5 or 6 each with a priest or brother 'facilitator', talking about relationships and stuff (like they'd know :rolleyes: ) not sex per se, the thing I remembered best and enjoyed the best was not going on the bus with the others but getting a lift with 2 other lads in one of the few relatively sane teacher's Golf Mk1 GTI, first time I was ever in a car that could noticeably accelerate, not a BL or Fiat pos

Somebody asked the priest in our group what was the weirdest thing he'd ever heard in confession, he said it was some guy 'who said he'd shagged a dog', I couldn't suppress a laugh :pac: then that night one of the lads who was a repeat leaving student and into drugs dropped an acid tab but got away with letting on it was a 'flashback'

I'm sure some of them sneaked off to the pub in the town for a while earlier that night too, but I was never one who got to hang around with the cool crowd, quite the opposite. Several of my 'schoolmates' (and the teachers) were borderline psychopaths and I heard a few have been inside (not the teachers). Not many of either I'd p**s on if they were on fire and I didn't keep in contact with any of them.

Shrap

Hmm. I got a bit of sex education I hadn't been...em...exposed to before on a school trip to the midlands too. I believe his name was "Devo", he had a wonderful two-tone mullet and he was from Coolock. Very informative. Not sure the parents signed off on there being 3 different schools there, but the trip was all about broadening your horizons so I dutifully went along with the remit...

Hotblack Desiato

Are we not men? We are 'Devo' :pac:

I bet he was more Jocko than Homo (I can bet I'm going to have to explain this, for the more PC types.)

Absolutely no freakin' way they would have allowed that sort of thing in our school. We were supposed to pretend the opposite sex simply didn't exist until our wedding day and then be perfect heterosexuals. I got bullied rotten for 'being gay' without the benefit of actually being gay, so I feel cheated.

They actually staggered the break times and lunch times between our school and the nearby girls' secondary, just in case an occasion of temptation may somehow have arisen in spite of their horrific uniform :rolleyes:

I only discovered wimmin in college and I had a lot of catching up to do so I was nearly finished there before I got up to speed :mad: thanks a bunch, repressed and sexual-sin obsessed 80s Ireland.

Shrap

Hotblack Desiato wrote: »

I bet he was more Jocko than Homo

This is true. Sadly, for me it was more a case of this
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VjEq-r2agqc

PopePalpatine

I graduated from a multi-denominational secondary school in 2012. I'd say my sex education was a weird mix of informative sex education on one side and religious bullsh*t on the other.

The informative stuff was from Junior Cert science and a few guests from outside. My (all-boys Catholic) primary school also went over sex ed briefly (i.e. the function of the penis) and I can't really remember anything from religious whackos. The highlight of sex ed had to be a classmate fainting when the vagina was being described.

The bullsh*t came, of course, from the religious side. The chaplain, an outwardly sweet woman in her 30s, was one of our SPHE teachers (they were cycled throughout the year). One week, she played this DVD by this Christian fundamentalist woman called Pam. I didn't pay much attention to it, as I usually used SPHE class to do homework so I had less books to carry home that evening. One thing that I remember was her converting a German man to her fundamentalism.

Also, there was this group of Christian youth preachers (or whatever) that came around in 3rd year. We were given a choice between paying €5 to see them or get sent to a room for the day to do whatever. One thing they preached was that abstinence-before-marriage bullsh*t - one of my classmates noticed that one of the preachers - a guy in his early 20s - had a wedding ring, and asked him about it and the preacher went on about faithfulness to his wife.

Shrap

Hotblack Desiato wrote: »

Absolutely no freakin' way they would have allowed that sort of thing in our school. We were supposed to pretend the opposite sex simply didn't exist until our wedding day and then be perfect heterosexuals. I got bullied rotten for 'being gay' without the benefit of actually being gay, so I feel cheated.

They actually staggered the break times and lunch times between our school and the nearby girls' secondary, just in case an occasion of temptation may somehow have arisen in spite of their horrific uniform :rolleyes:

Crikey. Sounds woeful. Yes, Newpark was pretty progressive - although also lacking in sex ed, there was no repression. I was lucky.

My Dad recalled once himself and a friend being dragged inside the neighbouring convent school (he went to Synge street CBS) by some nuns to show to the girls the disgusting perverted kind of beast they were to stay away from. He had only been walking past the school.

Not much changed from the 50's seemingly

Hotblack Desiato

PopePalpatine wrote: »

I graduated from a multi-denominational secondary school in 2012.

:eek:

Clearasil & Hormones >>>>

:pac:

Oulwans & Oulfellas <<<<<

Hotblack Desiato

I think most lads of my generation had little idea what to do when they actually did get to the 'holiest of holies' (TM Quentin Tarantino, Pulp Fiction) except horse it in there lad and hope for the best

Similarly the 70s-born generation ladies had good intentions but no idea how to pleasure a man, someone tell them what a banjo string is and why yanking hard on it hurts, ffs!!! and when guys are pleasuring themselves they don't take a vice-grip and then yank it as far up and as far down as fast as possible, there is a reason why ladies, so don't think if enough is good then more is always better

The internet porn generation presumably have none of these problems, because real life is just like porn except there are fewer busty ladies living alone with broken washing machines. Perhaps they 'know' more than we did, but do they understand any better, I have my doubts.

Shrap

Hotblack Desiato wrote: »

The internet porn generation presumably have none of these problems, because real life is just like porn except there are fewer busty ladies living alone with broken washing machines. Perhaps they 'know' more than we did, but do they understand any better, I have my doubts.

Oh I'm very doubtful too. The new porn generation have all of these problems and then some, afaik. Doesn't matter how much you got told or not told in the days of yore, access was what counted! I had no such info as the kids these days but was definitely better off than you in that I wasn't deliberately separated from the opposite sex, but only marginally better off in terms of knowing how to do anything.

"Knowing" everything already is a whole new problem for this generation, in that how well does it really go when you think posing for the money shot is what it takes to excite your partner? SOOO much disinformation to be got from porn, it's distinctly unfunny. And is having a huge impact on people learning what they like/don't like for themselves by exploration. Turns out viewing doesn't really cut it as an educational tool (pun intended).

Shrap

Hotblack Desiato wrote: »

Similarly the 70s-born generation ladies had good intentions but no idea how to pleasure a man, someone tell them what a banjo string is and why yanking hard on it hurts, ffs!!! and when guys are pleasuring themselves they don't take a vice-grip and then yank it as far up and as far down as fast as possible, there is a reason why ladies, so don't think if enough is good then more is always better

Speaking of 70's-born good intentions and strings, I learned quite quickly that guitar players were not for me. I'll leave the why of it to your imagination. Ouch.

Hotblack Desiato

Steel strings (calluses on left hand) or nylon strings (f-k off nails on the right hand)??

(righthand-o-normic post, please read it in a mirror if you are sinister)

sbsquarepants

purplecow1977 wrote: »

The only reference they made was to having a baby that the best situation is when you are in a loving relationship.

Sounds fair enough really - seems like the ideal situation to me

Boskowski

I grew up in Germany, mixed school which is the norm.
We had sex ed when we were around 13 in school. It was in biology classes. it was fairly matter of factly, mammals, menstruation, the act etc but the emotional side was touched as well. Contraception was covered at length.

Looking back it was probably fairly well done. Of course it raised giggles and the like but what do you expect at that age. We wrote an exam about it too but again mostly in the context of biology and reproduction. It was fairly science like and looking back the only awkwardness came probably form the fact that we all knew this is something we weren't supposed to know about until then so it must be terribly special and secret and giggly and all that. I think had there been a more natural lead up to it - say some sort of high level education without the graphics - there wouldn't have been much fuss about it at all.
You just knew there is something, why weren't you allowed to watch the late films and all that? That makes me think that the only awkwardness around the subject s the one we create for ourselves.

I brought it up with my parents thats thats what we're doing in school and I guess they figured thats that covered then. No big man to man talks only about not doing anything stupid and contraception.

miamee

I went to a mixed gender community school 1990-95. Aside from doing the functional stuff in Biology, we also had a few different people come in to us to give talks. I specifically remember being brought to the science lecture room (both boys and girls) when we were in either third or fifth year for a talk. The guy giving the talk was there to talk about contraception, mainly benefits of condoms and showed us how to put one on properly - on a banana I think He told us all about how condoms used not be available and the trouble that had gone on when Virgin Megastore on Aston Quay started selling them in Dublin and that now they were more freely available, we should make use of them when needed.

The school itself, though not great for some things, really made sure that we all knew about reproduction and contraception which is to their credit. It was in an area where teen pregnancy was not unusual at the time so I suppose they were doing their best to combat that. The parish priest would still have been on the board of the school then so I have no idea if he turned a blind eye to it, didn't know about it or was all for it. Would be interesting to know.

Harika

Not from sex education in school, but from sex education at the pre-marriage course (2014), delivered from a woman in her 70s:

When a woman is in good mood and has shiny hair, she is fertile

Men are like a light switch and women are like a kettle

PopePalpatine

Oh, I forgot to mention: I just remembered that there was a stack of religion textbooks on a windowsill with c.150 pages in one of the classrooms my Junior Cert class went to for SPHE. I read it out of curiosity, and the bit about sex ed was full of abstinence bull****.

robindch

PopePalpatine wrote: »

[...] the bit about sex ed was full of abstinence [...]

If abstinence is sex-ed, then atheism is a religion.