It was early 00’s in the US South and basically boiled down to don’t have sex before marriage, you WILL catch an STD (boys) or get pregnant (girls). Our science teacher though, went off script their last year teaching, and said we’d likely ignore the advice to abstain and if we did have sex, to use a condom. I always liked that teacher.

This same public high school also taught the life and death of Jesus in history class.

I can’t recall if it was on the second or third year of high school, but it was a single Biology class. The teacher was comfortable with it, but she was very clearly biased towards abstinence and insisted the only way to be 100% sure was to just not have sex.

Despite that, she still talked about basics of sex and genitalia, a few common STDs, and basic preventive measures, both for pregnancy and STDs - even if they weren’t particularly effective. Both coitus interruptus and sodomy (we had a loooot of fun repeating that word for a week or so) were mentioned as ways to avoid pregnancy, but condoms and IUDs were the real recommendations.

As a class, we weren’t too rowdy, though there was a kid or two that made a few too many jokes - and the teacher cut them off fairly quickly. I also recall she handled pamphlets with each of the methods talked during class and their approximate efficacy.

This was in 2005-ish and I’m Brazilian.

Also of note this was the second time, the first attempt happened in middle school (and in a different school altogether) and we had to do a presentation on STDs and the like. The teacher decided to cancel at the last minute because we were clearly too embarrassed to actually talk about the subject in front of our classmates.

9th grade. Public school. Teacher opens the first class with “All penises are the same size” and “I don’t answer questions. That’s what your handouts are for”. I can’t for the life of me understand how my generation had such a high teenage pregnancy rate, can you?

I think of all the education that I missed, but then my homework was never quite like this…

Got gifted a biology encyclopedia left open on my table opened on the page about reproduction

I had an surprising one, actually: I went to a private religious school, but I had a strangely comprehensive sex education.

It started with unvarnished discussions of human anatomy and cautions about sexual abuse around age 8, and then moved on to the basics of (hetero)sexuality by the time I was a preteen. In high school that continued, though talk about birth control was postponed until the health units of later physical education courses, which not everyone took. Of course, the stress was always that sexual activity should be limited to monogamous (heterosexual) marriage, and there was no mention of anything outside of the hetero-normative.

The last wrinkle was that it was all opt-out. At every point, there was at least one person who would leave the room for the duration of the class because their parents really didn’t want them learning about naughty bits.

So it ended up actually providing a pretty good foundation. It was still incomplete and biased, but a lot better than what you would expect when you hear “private religious school.”

I remember in elementary school we had a lesson on sex organs. When I turned in my test paper, I curiously asked my teacher, “If the sperm is in the male, and the egg is in the female, how does the sperm transfer over?”

All she said was, “Well, what do you think?” To which I replied, “I don’t know.” Then I quietly returned to my desk. Later I discussed it with my friend and we concluded that a male must pee into a female. Because at the time, pee was the only thing we knew came out of the penis.

I was raised partially in a Unitarian Universalist church which believes in comprehensive sex education. I was still a dumbass about it but they definitely tried to inform me and I think I have a healthier sex life than most people have had.

Almost 100% via public school.

My first sex-ed class was in fourth grade, then another in fifth and sixth grade. In junior high and high school I was required to take general health courses that covered aspects of sex.

My religious parents didn’t teach me shit and I wish they had.

I remember in the 5th grade we were reproductive taught anatomy with black and white line drawings of adult genitalia and it literally didn’t occur to me that it had anything to do with my body or anyone else’s. The hairy spread beavers or the cross sections with lines referring to some squiggle as the vas deferens… It was about as meaningful as being in geography class trying to memorize the names of every island in the arctic.

Ohh, good question!

Well, in middle school, the teachers split the boys from the girls. Unfortunately, we got stuck with the security guard as our male role model. Instead of talking about how our dicks are supposed to work during puberty, he spent the hour vagely instructing a bunch of kids how to flirt with women. It was boring as shit, kind of inappropriate, and we would’ve been better off doing literally anything else. I also wasn’t taught sex ed at my high school. I have a vague memory of being gathered once in the auditorium for a talk this one time, but I don’t remember them going over anything important.

So instead, I used to frequent the local LGBT community center for years after school. And that’s where I got all my real education about so many interesting topics. The space was sex-positive, meaning you could openly discuss it educationally, share your experiences, and ask questions without judgment. They covered all the types of sexual orientations, all the types of condoms, sex toys, sexual practices, diseases, treatment options, warned about drug use during sex, gave a lot of health recommendations with the latest research, the whole nine yards. They regularly had programming for young adults during weeknights with topics relating to the community that didn’t necessarily relate to sex. It was amazing and eye-opening to have my gay life fully explained before I became an adult. I wish it were more common, if only for the experience alone, which was wonderful.

But what I love is that I’ve seen the same format again at my current LGBT community center in another country. It wouldn’t surprise me if I walked in and kindly asked for help, and they’d answer all my questions regardless of my background or orientation or whatever. Their willingness to communicate accurate medical information for your safety is incredible.

I know its a cliché but honestly I got my early sex ed from porn magazines I found in the woods, fortunately playboy at the time did have articles that were educational.

The school took us on a field trip to the hospital where they told us that if we have sex we will get aids and die.

A nurse told us a horror story of a teenage mother who died and they showed us some fetuses in jars.

This was in central FL in the 90s

It was perfectly OK and uneventful enough that I’ll never understand why anyone would feel the need to discuss it.

In the UK in the 1970s we were shown cross sections of male and family reproductive organs and copied pages out of a textbook about the essential mechanics. I can’t remember any discussion or moral guidance in the slightest. But then at that point I was well into my ‘hedge porn’ stage so that’s how I really educated myself.