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When I was in elementary school, a quarter of a century ago, sex education was a matter of one or two delicate films on the physical signs of “growing up.” At the age of ten or eleven, girls and boys were herded into separate rooms—usually in the company of a parent. There, in industrial-gray pictures and solemn monotones, they were introduced to the world of gametes, ovaries, and menstruation. Not exactly titillating material, this reproductive information. But those were the days when teenage boys and girls still glanced shyly at each other across dance floors—before carnal knowledge had become a cause célèbre of education. Today, as everyone knows, sex education is a different story altogether. In a growing number of schools, children are no longer allowed to approach puberty wondering over the mysteries of love. The pleasures of sex are bared for them, and all the latest sexual paraphernalia explored. These are the days when kids pass condoms, “dental dams” (a kind of condom for oral sex), and “finger cots” (condoms that fit over the finger for heavy petting) around the classroom—the days of “comprehensive sexuality education,” where all erotic possibilities are unveiled.

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