What American Kids Learn
It all started with anti-masturbation tours and bland food.
Hi Everyone,
Happy hump day and thanks so much for reading the ADULT SEX ED newsletter! If you’re enjoying it, please share with friends, so they can be hilariously informed, too.
This is a weekly newsletter from me, Dani Faith Leonard, a comedian and film producer (you can follow me on instagram). It’s an extension of the live comedy show ADULT SEX ED that I’ve hosted since 2018. The show and this newsletter is about plugging the holes in our education as adults, so I’ll be doing just that (here’s a description).
Ready to get a little smarter this week? Okay, let’s go!
NYC! Tickets are on sale!
The next ADULT SEX ED live show is June 22nd at 7PM at the Midnight Theatre. Scroll down to find out more about the show or click to get tickets.
WHAT AMERICAN KIDS ACTUALLY LEARN (and how we got here)
May is “Sex Ed For All” month, but sex ed has been regularly in the news the past year. If you watch conservative news channels, you’ll hear that public schools want to “groom” children (with factual information). While politicians claim sex ed is controversial, an overwhelming majority of voters support sex ed in middle school (89%) and high school (98%) according to a 2018 poll. Where political differences arise is over the content of that education. These are arguments that aren’t only happening in the US (example: Canadians are banning books too).
So what are kids actually learning in America? The real answer is super complicated. Since sex ed isn’t federally mandated, it’s really all over the map. The Guttmacher Institute has a chart that explains each state’s policy. Here are some general highlights:
38 states and the District of Columbia mandate sex education and/or HIV education.
26 states and DC require instruction to be age appropriate.
29 states require that abstinence be stressed.
11 states and DC require information about consent.
4 states require only negative information to be provided on homosexuality and/or positive emphasis on heterosexuality (Florida, Kentucky, Louisiana, and Mississippi).
Only 17 states require sex ed to be medically accurate.
You can see how each state fares HERE.
It wasn’t that different when I was growing up. I grew up in a really open home with no shame around sex. My mom was even a sex ed teacher for a while. But in high school, we watched Philadelphia to learn that if you have sex, you will get AIDS and if you get skinny in Hollywood, you will win prizes. This dichotomy was the impetus for my live show!
It’s hard for me to imagine that anyone wouldn’t support a law that required sex ed to be medically accurate. So how did we get that way? At every live show, I take the audience through some key moments in sex ed history. Here’s a sneak peek at a few of them:
1600s - 1800s:
America was founded by puritans and much like repressed puritans who have been running our country today, the early Pilgrims weren’t very educated when it came to sex. The first iteration of sex ed came in the 1830s, when religious leaders, like Reverend Sylvester Graham, traveled the East Coast on anti-masturbation tours. Does that sound fun? Random fact: this dude also invented the graham cracker, buying into the concept that bland food will prevent people from cracking one off.
Early 1900s:
A woman named Ella Flagg Young became Chicago’s superintendent of schools 1913 and was the first to formalize sex ed, but it didn’t last. Just a few years later, the military decided that they needed to educate their soldiers after over 300,000 servicemen got syphilis and/or gonorrhea in WWI. The military really implemented sex ed during WWII and public schools adopted programs of their own.
Mid-1900s through today:
Most sex ed is taught through film and video; there have been over 100,000 sex ed films produced. Some of the videos shown in the 60s and 70s would be considered pornagraphic today! But in the 80s and 90s, the AIDS crisis led schools to teach HIV protection, and the federal government funded "abstinence education." In 2023, most students can learn more bullshit than real information in sex ed because only 17 states require the information taught to be medically accurate.
If you think it can’t get worse than watching Philadelphia as a scare tactic, I guess it can, since you wouldn’t even be allowed to do that in Florida. Just last week, a Florida teacher said she is under investigation after showing a 5th grade class a Disney movie with a gay character. It can make you nostalgic for a religious leader on an anti-masturbation tour, can’t it? I nominate Joel Osteen.
See ADULT SEX ED Live in New York City!
ADULT SEX ED is a live comedy show hosted by Dani Faith Leonard that plugs the holes in your education. Through stand up and interviews with comedian guests, we’ll revisit the “lessons” they learned the hard way, while the host fills in the gaps with deep dives on topics you’ve probably never thought about.
Thursday June 22nd // 7PM at the Midnight Theatre (75 Manhattan West Plaza New York, NY 10001). Special guests to be announced soon!
Newsletter readers: Use the discount code ASE10 for 10% off tickets.
Don’t miss a newsletter!
Subscribers can read older issues here. In case you missed it, here’s my most recent post, an essay on freezing my eggs:
Want an Adult Sex Ed live show in your city? Let me know by responding to this email or leave a comment.
As always, please share the newsletter with friends!
I'm glad I came from a family that was open about it as well as you did because I was taught that were all sexual in nature and the world is afraid of guilty pleasure in our lives that we have to be manougyms because the world says that one mate for life and that isn't the way the mind works for either sex. If you want something that you don't get at home you will go out and get what you feel you are missing out on