If you’re like most people who attended public school in the United States, sex education evokes memories of being separated into boys and girls, giggling as instructors slipped condoms over bananas and flipped through highly detailed anatomical diagrams. Thankfully, you may have thought, it was over after one or two days.
Or maybe you didn’t have sex ed at all. Only 24 states plus Washington, DC mandate sex education in public schools, according to the Guttmacher Institute: New York is not one of them. Our state does mandate HIV education, but there’s no requirement that what is taught be medically accurate or culturally appropriate.