Brace yourselves: sex ed arrives at the city's middle and high schools next year, and it. Will. Be. SEXY. According to the Post, high school students will note the cost of condoms and "research a route from a school to a clinic that provides birth control and STD tests." Middle schoolers will use "risk cards" to sort activities likes mutual masturbation and oral sex. "I didn't know how much detail they would get," one SoHo mother says, quaintly assuming that students don't already think and talk about sex all the time.
The DOE will require a semester of sex education in sixth or seventh grades and another in the first two years of high school, and schools may use any curriculum they want but are encouraged to use HealthSmart and Reducing the Risk. Both stress "that abstinence is the best way to avoid pregnancy and STD/HIV." The aforementioned SoHo mother, when told what her son may learn, said the subjects "seem pretty outrageous." Surely she'll consult her children on those "outrageous" truths in due time.
