Open Forum On Sexuality Education

Testing, testing…

Tucked away at Friends’ Central School in Wynnewood, PA, is sexuality educator Al Vernacchio. The class Vernacchio teaches is called Sexuality and Society, which centers around teaching 9th-12th graders the many wonders surrounding sex and the human body. Al Vernacchio has been an activist for comprehensive health education and with a résumé like his it’s easy to see why he is well respected:

• BA in Theology from St. Joseph’s University
• MSEd in Human Sexuality Education from the University of Pennsylvania.
• Member of The Society for the Scientific Study of Sexuality (SSSS)
• Member of The American Association of Sexuality Educators, Counselors, and Therapists (AASECT)
• Member of Advanced Sexuality Educators and Trainers (ASET)

I first discovered this accomplished, unflappable man by reading Laurie Abraham’s article in the New York Times called “Teaching Good Sex”. Abraham observes Vernacchio’s classroom and conducts a series of voluntary interviews of the students and their teacher. Lack of restrictions make the style of this sexuality education class incredibly unique.

One of the first times I heard him speak was while watching Vernacchio’s Ted Talk, “Sex needs a new metaphor, here’s one.” Both the examples from the Ted Talk and the first day of the Sexuality and Society class are the same. Vernacchio deconstructs the euphemisms in our culture used to describe sex. Abraham writes,

Vernacchio explained that sex as baseball implies that it’s a game; that one party is the aggressor (almost always the boy), while the other is defending herself; that there is a strict order of play, and you can’t stop until you finish. “If you’re playing baseball,” he elaborated, “you can’t just say, ‘I’m really happy at second base.’

This is a simple metaphor we all take for granted, but Vernacchio used this example as a demonstration to the class of how to question the validity of social norms. Vernacchio teaches his students that sex is not a game — sex is about mutual respect and admiration. This style of open learning is in stark contrast with our public schools’ current sex education curriculum. A curriculum that homologates scare tactics to enforce a horribly skewed abstinence-only agenda. Abraham writes,

“Across the country, the approach ranges from abstinence until marriage is the only acceptable choice, contraceptives don’t work and premarital sex is physically and emotionally harmful, to abstinence is usually best, but if you must have sex, here are some ways to protect yourself from pregnancy and disease. The latter has been called “disaster prevention” education by sex educators who wish they could teach more; a dramatic example of the former comes in a video called “No Second Chances,” which has been used in abstinence-only courses. In it, a student asks a school nurse, “What if I want to have sex before I get married?” To which the nurse replies, “Well, I guess you’ll just have to be prepared to die.””

“Be prepared to die.” These words haunted me as I first read them. Are we really comfortable frightening our young people away from sex in this blatant manner? Those terrible comments, experiences, and failings of abstience-only sex education are the reasons I stand by leaders like Al Vernacchio. Another sexuality educator and ally to Vernacchio is Paul Joannides, who Abraham quotes in her article:

It’s axiomatic, however, that parents who support richer sex education don’t make the same ruckus with school officials as those who oppose it. “We need to be there at the school boards and say: ‘Guess where kids are getting their messages about sex from? They’re getting it from porn,’ ” Joannides exhorted. “All we’re talking about is just being able to acknowledge that sex is a good thing in the right circumstances, that it’s a normal thing.”

Joannides and Vernacchio are only two voices proclaiming a need for a type of education built on inclusion and not exclusion — comprehensive not afraid, because sex is not a game.