High School; these were the days of wine and roses, or at least chilled milk and cold hamburgers.  Those were enjoyable years of our lives that we can only have back through our memories; tardies, homeroom, assemblies, gym, and yes, Comprehensive Health, otherwise known as Sex Education.  We remember all of those things, but the sex education we especially remember.  Those tenuous moments of anticipation when your gym coach shuffled in his Nikes and trembled in his gym shorts, knowing he wasn't terribly comfortable with teaching this.  I can still smell the dour odor of the gymnasium, hear that kid in the back scuffling his feet on the waxed floor, and how all the girls had to leave the room while you sat in this most secretive meeting.  I can still remember the tense social speculation in those moments before Coach Whoever rubbed the glob of Vaseline on the condom and made it pop.  Oh, the value in those life lessons.

Honestly, I don't think I learned anything valuable in "Comprehensive Health."  I feel fairly safe in saying that it was anything but comprehensive.  It felt more like the dark ages.  The textbooks were made in 1973.  It's always a bad sign when the male anatomy model sports a fro better than any basketball player of the era, and we're talking about pubic hair here.  Being a teacher now, I see that the students are still using these same books that I used in the mid-1990s.  I think it's up to our generation to make sex education do exactly that; educate us about the nasty.

Being in education, I think we should take a more realistic approach to this whole issue.  Here are some changes that I, as a male, think we should take.

1) Find a new teacher:  Coaches are probably not the right person to teach Sex Education.  Think about it; he is a jock, and probably brags endlessly to his other coaching friends how he can get high quality tail and is practically a sex god in bed.  This is the guy, after all, who raises his hand for a "high-five" every time he talks about "knocking some slut up" during the stages of pregnancy lecture.  The gym teacher is probably the worst person on earth to teach kids about sex because this middle-aged know-it-all has probably seen less action than a librarian.  Sorry big-fella, we all know about your "two-minute drill."  My vote for replacement is the shop teacher.  Think about it, these guys are just brilliant.  Shop teachers are usually overweight and have a realistic perspective on life.  They seldom shave and usually look like closet perverts.  I'm sure your local shop teacher has had enough strike-outs in his life to fill and hour long class discussion.  95% of the teens in the room could relate to him better in terms of success rate, and the worst thing that could happen is that he may go into a bit too much detail about the time he boned the art sub three years ago in the Agricultural Science room during a faculty meeting.

2) Let the girls stay:  What are we, a secret society?  Do the girls really have to leave while we go over anatomy?  Do we think some reject is going to pull out his shortcomings in the middle of class to liven up discussion?  Face it, women are seldom impressed with our offerings; just trust them.

3) Get rid of the textbooks:  Those ancient textbooks have to go.  Textbooks altogether should go for sex education.  Perhaps replace them with shots of the faculty nude.  If there's one way to turn kids off from sex early on, it's to show Mrs. Smith in a vaginal diagram spread-eagle.  You won't think about sex after that until Tomorrow, Tomorrow, Tomorrow, if ever.  It's the perfect birth control method.

4) Blow up more condoms:  I like this idea.  In fact, it's a vivid memory of mine. The explosion that sent Vaseline flying everywhere has burnt into my mind like no other.  Truth be told, I remember this moment more vividly than my graduation.  I've never tried it on my own, but I think its because it's too much fun to watch your coach make an ass of himself.

That's just a humble start.  I'm sure many school districts would find the measures deplorable, but I think we should get real with the kids.  Show them what's really out there.  And if that fails, we could just have the drama department put it on in a play.  Just as long as Mrs. Smith plays herself.

- Brandon