The joy of sex education
| STOP LOOK LISTEN The Magazine's sex education film festival |
Remember sex education films? Remember feeling a little on the embarrassed side? Jude Rogers takes a nostalgic look back at a state-enforced rite of passage, while at the bottom of this page you can find Whatsoever a Man Soweth, the first of our sex education films drawn from a DVD collection from the British Film Institute.
When did you first find out about the birds and bees?
Did your parents sit you down and explain the mechanics of how you were made? Or did a friend giggle like mad while they whispered to you about the things they had learned from their big sister or brother?
 |  Young military men were warned about the dangers of loose women, and how venereal disease would spoil them in the eyes of their family and country  |
Or were you one of the innocent souls who learned about mummies, daddies and babies on a screen in your classroom?
Learning about sex is a momentous part of any child's life, and sex education is a tricky business indeed - especially for the teacher burdened with the task of telling schoolchildren what exactly goes where. But in decades past, some help was at hand from the overhead projector, the video recorder and the sex education film.
Sir or Miss would inevitably be hovering by the play button with a crinkle in their brow, not knowing whether their pupils would laugh, blush or keel over at what happened next, but their mission to unleash the lessons of a lifetime began here.
Sinful desires
And the roots of the modern sex education film go back a long way.
Early examples were deeply moral movies made in the shadows of war, where young military men were warned about the dangers of loose women, and how venereal disease would spoil them in the eyes of their family and country.
In other films, teenage girls were told that their sexual desires were sinful, and that they would be blamed for their unwanted pregnancies. Rarely were men or women given any practical advice about contraception, or told how they could manage these feelings themselves.
 She's unhappy because she had sex out of wedlock |
But after the 1960s, things started to change. The contraceptive pill, sexual liberation, and the first waves of feminism started to change social attitudes towards the genders, and sex education films became less heavy-handed.
Many were gentler affairs, where sex was characterised as an enjoyable activity in a natural world - one in which animals and plants also mated happily. But nature was king, and sex could only be blissful when reproduction was its intention, with personal pleasure being a fortunate bonus.
 They're happy because they waited till they were married |
As ever, there was a fear that sex education films would encourage sexual interest - and initiation - among younger people. But even in the 1970s and 1980s, most of them did the opposite. These films were often shown to children in their last years at junior school, when they often had some ideas about sex already.
Many had snuck a look at a book or heard about sex from friends, while the more cavalier characters in class might have encountered pornography in magazines or in films. As sex education films often glossed over penetration into a sanitised narrative, smirks would accompany these films just as much as grimaces.
The laughter didn't stop when dainty cartoons of the human anatomy showed what happened inside us, rather than between us. But occasionally, some films would show very progressive material. A few memorable films showed the experience of childbirth, prompting gasps and stunned silences and, in some cases, fainting.
Rarely did films show sexual acts. Dr Martin Cole's 1971 film Growing Up, is one of the few that broke with convention, showing masturbation and intercourse acted out by real people. By attempting to dispel the shame and guilt that clouded sexual behaviour, he received some positive feedback from teachers and pupils.
Novelty value
But the film also triggered national controversy. It was banned by Birmingham City Council and criticised heavily by the Sun newspaper.
Whatever their content, educational videos still had novelty value for children in the 1970s and 1980s. For starters, visual material was rare in schools, and it is easy to forget that televisions at home had only three channels until 1982.
 In the 1970s the protagonists became a lot hairier |
Sexual images and debate were also less common. There were tighter controls on TV and magazines, and the availability of sexual resources on the internet, both in terms of health and pornography, was still many years away. But these films also had novelty value for teachers.
While obviously saving them the embarrassment of explaining the mechanics of sex to minors, they also brought to their classrooms an engaging new tool. After a class watched a sex education film, and thought about the interesting images and ideas they had encountered, they could then pose questions to their teacher about what they had seen, and healthy debate could be encouraged.
In many cases, this actually happened.
Many would argue that sex education films are needed more than ever today, especially while teenage pregnancies continue to rise, and sex continues to be so prominent in popular culture.
And for those of us looking back to the sex education films of our childhoods, remembering messages both vivid and vague, it is obvious that any education is better than none - even if it might cause the odd guffaw or grimace.
This 1917 film warns soldiers against consorting with prostitutes
This stark and unpleasant tale is a bit more Shakespeare than sex education.
Made in 1917 to prevent Canadian soldiers travelling to World War I catching syphilis and other sexually-transmitted diseases, it tells the story of Dick, a plucky soldier in London.
We see Dick accosted by a prostitute in the street. As they talk another Canadian intervenes and warns Dick away from the woman, giving him the card of a doctor he can visit.
The doctor takes our hero on a tour of hospital wards where he sees the lesions and other unpleasant symptoms that syphilis can cause. Dick realises the ladies of the night are not for him.
But back in Canada, it is revealed that Dick's brother Tom has not been so lucky. The film shows a flashback of Tom being robbed by a prostitute and it becomes apparent that Tom's wife has caught syphilis from him.
Tom is cured of the disease, but when his wife gives birth, the baby is blind.
"The film - as the biblical title suggests - is essentially a straight sermon, a form that its target audience would have found familiar both from church at home and during their military service," says Bryony Dixon, curator of silent films at the BFI.
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