As someone who never received sex education in school, it's sometimes hard for me to figure out if the awkward coaches and teachers depicted in movies and television shows ring true to the experiences of actual teenagers. Did the coach really have to mumble through a whole generalized speech about the birds and the bees? Are such ineffective and awkward and dysfunctional ways of teaching health really in practice?

I managed to successfully never receive any sex education other than what my parents and friends told me (my parents explained about a lot and I credit them for that). This was a great mix of moving around to different schools and sometimes homeschooling, and also the fact that my high school decided to give all incoming freshman the required health credit by pairing it with biology. In biology class we dissected fetal pigs and talked about Darwin and made little bracelets with glass tubes with our DNA. We never talked about sex or condoms or sexually transmitted diseases, and though reproduction was obviously alluded to, it was never mentioned in the way that it affected humans.

Now incoming freshman are required to actually take the class. Since I don't know anyone in the class and I personally haven't been in it, I can't really comment much on how its taught or what it focuses on. What I do know though is that recently they reviewed the subject of sex.

On a Monday morning the entire school walked into the cafeteria room which is also partially a locker room and houses the stage. At the end of each row of lockers we found a number of posters written in markers and pasted with magazine cutouts, asking us if we thought sex was worth it, pictures of sorrowful teenage girls holding their large bellies and empty strollers accompanying the text. Scripts for how to say no were also included, so that girls would know how to tell pushy guys to back off. Alcohol bottles were shown on some of the posters and warnings that drinking causes impaired judgement were also included. While I have to agree with the idea that if someone is pressuring or pushy you should tactfully tell them to leave you alone, and I also agree that when you're under the influence you aren't able to make any decisions about what you want and you're overly easy to take advantage of, I was disappointed by the posters for other reasons.

When reading these posters all I could get from them was the threat. If you have sex you will get pregnant and your life will be over and you will be sorry. All of which can be true. But this information wasn't supplemented by anything about birth control, and the only mention to condoms was one poster with a small clipping that said that girls were more likely to use a condom if the guy provided it. That was it. I combed through every single poster looking for something, anything to add to the fatalistic message that sex will ruin your life.

Another reason that these posters disappoint me so much is because they don't work. People sneer and ridicule them, write messages across them, laugh and tear them down. They suggest that teenagers play scrabble instead of have sex, and though scrabble is a great game, offering it to a couple hundred bored teenagers as an alternative to sex makes the entire attempt fail overall. Both people I know well and who I don't talk to much have agreed with me that the message of these posters is not effective or realistic and they can exist only as a joke. Maybe there's someone out there who was personally moved to abstinence because of seeing these posters, and if that's the case I applaud them. But for the rest of us I can only hope that one day in schools a more comprehensive and in-depth level of education can be reached, one that addresses the needs and questions of the students its aimed towards.

Until then this is what sex ed looks like in Houston Texas. I apologize for the terrible quality of the photographs, my camera isn't that great and some of the photos of other posters came out too grainy to make out at all.