In grade school we had separate film strips about our changing bodies that were shown during phys-ed class on the shower wall – boys saw the boys one and girls saw the girls one (permission slips were required).
Edit: this was WI in the late 70’s/early 80’s
You clearly had much closer relationships with your potential dates than I did in college - I usually didn’t find out the details of female acquaintance’s “schedule” until a good bit into the dating relationship. And trying to guess when their “mood phase II” was would certainly have been a terribly risky endeavour, in general. 
As to the OP - I, too, received a healthy dose of what was going on for both males and females in my sex ed class, which was… 6th grade? 5th? That would have been late-80’s-ish Toronto suburbs. They split up the boys and girls, but we boys sure learned a heck of a lot about the menstrual cycle. I’m a little bit, though I guess not all THAT much, surprised that it’s so uncommon now.
You are correct. That, too, is part of the point. Those people are almost universally not sufficiently educated on the matter themselves, or if they are, not passing it on the their kids.
My own experience in NY in the late 90’s/early 2000s: 5th grade, separate classes for boys and girls on the basics of puberty for your own gender. 7th grade health class was more comprehensive for both genders together and included introductions to birth control and STDs. 9th grade bio included a birth video during the human reproduction unit, which got into some simplified developmental biology as well. 11th grade health went more into detail on STDs and birth control, but was otherwise similar (or even simpler) than 7th grade health.
I’ll admit, while I knew mood changes and headaches were relevant from my sisters, but until I had a girlfriend I never really understood that cramps were a thing.
I don’t know, I think it makes more sense to cover the basics, rather than set up rules. Some women become emotional wrecks that experience debilitating cramps. Some women are the same people, emotionally and logically, and take an ibuprofen or naproxen sodium pill. Some women bloat and crave certain foods. Some women don’t bloat and eat the same food they usually do.
And some women don’t have periods at all for whatever reason, or their cycles are irregular or occur more or less frequently for longer or shorter periods of time.
That doesn’t mean the above information shouldn’t be conveyed, but that trying to normalize it doesn’t really accomplish anything that can’t be addressed by just saying that women’s menstrual cycles are different from one another.
Our sex ed classes started out in mixed groups where we learned all the basics including menstruation.
We were then split by sex and shown different films. I think we all learned basically the same stuff though just the films and class were tailored to make the different sexes more comfortable.
There’s an app for that! My friend’s ex-boyfriend had her in the app - love her but I can see that forewarned is forearmed in her case.
We had the videos in 6th grade. Boys and Girls were split into different classrooms and a few kids who’s parents objected to Sex-Ed were sent to the Gym. We watched a video about puberty, got a take home sheet, and that was it. This was mid 80s in WV.
Sadly, my memory is not nearly good enough to remember if the kids who went to the gym were the ones that got pregnant later in High School. I do know that some of the kids who got pregnant in High School and kept the babies, well those kids have had their own kids which are older than my kids. They squeezed in a whole extra generation on me, simply by getting knocked up practically the instant they hit puberty.
I’m genuinely puzzled. How on Earth can there be anyone who doesn’t know the basics? Sex ed starts at grade 4 (10 year olds), fer chrissakes.
I’m puzzled that you are puzzled.
There are a lot of places where school boards are packed with ideologues who think studying algebra leads to moral relativism, teaching evolution will turn kids into genocidal atheists, and American slaves were happy volunteers.
My kids learned a lot about human sexuality in church Sunday school.
I sat in on a number of the classes and part of an instructor training session, and read all the materials, before I let my children attend.
Since the local school system is pretty much broken, we were glad the church stepped up.
I had a friend who is an instructor for that course - sounded SO good and SO honest.
Maybe it’s just because I went to school in California. As far as I can remember we were never separated by gender in any of our sex education classes at school. I think the first sex-ed call was in 3rd or 4th grade. I defiantly remember periods being gone over in exquisite detail. I remember in middle school having to tell a girl how to properly use a tampon.
Sex ed, its not that difficult, except when adults with silly ideas get involved.
I have vague memories of our elementary school separating the boys and girls one day (probably around 4th grade), and making us all watch a film about our “changing bodies.” The film the girls watched was supposed to be informational, but I remember leaving feeling uncomfortable and more confused than before.
Also, they gave very little info about how guys would change, other than to say they would get more hairy and aggressive (???). In my little child brain, I somehow got bits of that mixed up with the idea that women go through a monthly cycle, so I was under the impression that boys were turning into werewolves or something (becoming hairy once a month).
If I ever have children, I plan on giving them a better introduction to the subject than I got.
<a href=“http://www.amazon.com/Everyone-Poops-My-Body-Science/dp/192913214X/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1394140116&sr=1-1&keywords=everybody+poops"target=”_blank">Everyone poops. 
FTA: “… I remember learning … that girls have three holes…”.
Jeepers, how did the instructor (or maybe the author of the article) manage automatic breathing.
You had pancakes? We had bananas. They really should have had both genders meet up afterwards with a huge pot of Nutella.
That would make a really cool comic. “Billy is becoming a young man, so he will no longer be staying inside the Special Time of the Month bunker with your sister and Aunt Frances and I. He’ll be out hunting deer and savaging unsecured livestock with Daddy and the other men-folk.”
This is a fantastic straw man. No one said you need to be okay with women leaving tampons everywhere.
Exactly. It doesn’t even have to be about avoiding an aggravated female. It can also be about realizing that your wife might need more attention, words of affection, etc.
Hooray for OWL - my son is taking the 8th grade curriculum this year. I really don’t understand parents who are squicked out by the thought of their kids getting accurate info about themselves, sex, and relationships. Don’t they understand that their kids WILL (guaranteed!) get inaccurate info on the web, and at a younger age than the parents realize. Don’t they want their kids to be both physically and emotionally as healthy as possible?
