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Student's Manual
Encouraged young men to abstain from masturbation because it would lead to decreased energy and productivity -
National Education Association
NEA discussed passing a revolution that called for "moral education in the schools". -
Chicago Breaks the Ice
Chicago becomes the first major city to implement sex ed. in high schools. -
American Hygiene Association
The American Hygiene Association, founded in 1914 as part of the Progressive-era social purity movement, helped teach soldiers about sexual hygiene throughout the war. Instructors used a machine called the stereomotorgraph to show soldiers microscopic slides of syphilis and gonorrhea organisms, as well as symptoms of the diseases on the body of an actual soldier. -
The Chamberlain-Kahn Act
It took rampant STDs during WWI to get the federal government involved in sex ed. In 1918, Congress passed The Chamberlain-Kahn Act, which allocated money to educate soldiers about syphilis and gonorrhea. During this time, Americans began to view sex ed as a public-health issue. -
"Damaged Goods"
The earliest sex-education film, Damaged Goods, warned soldiers of the consequences of syphilis. In the film, a man has sex with a prostitute the night before his wedding, gets syphilis, passes the disease on to his newborn baby, and then commits suicide. The film received positive reviews, with one critic writing, "American boy(s)...should be made to see it for they are to become the American manhood, and the cleaner physically, the better." -
Teacher Training
In the 1930s, the U.S. Office of Education began to publish materials and train teachers -
SIECUS Founded
In 1964, Mary Calderone, a physician who had been the medical director at Planned Parenthood, founded the Sexuality Information and Education Council of the United States (SIECUS). SIECUS was created in part to challenge the hegemony of the American Social Hygiene Association, which then dominated sex-education curriculum development. -
Contraceptives Legalized for Married Couples
In 1965 contraceptives were made legal for married couples. -
New York University Grant
In 1968, The U.S. Office of Education gave New York University a grant to develop graduate programs for training sex-education teachers. -
Opposition to Sex Ed.
In the widely distributed 1968 pamphlet entitled "Is the School House the Proper Place to Teach Raw Sex?" Gordon Drake and James Hargis framed sex ed as communist indoctrination: "[If] the new morality is affirmed, our children will become easy targets for Marxism and other amoral, nihilistic philosophies—as well as V.D.!" Rumors spread that sex instructors were encouraging students to be homosexuals or even stripping and having sex in front of their classes. -
20 States Oppose Sex Ed.
Twenty state legislatures have voted to restrict or abolish sexuality education. -
Almost all Schools Offer Sex Ed.
By 1988, over 90 percent of all U.S. schools offered some sex education programming. -
Jocelyn Elders Criticized
Although people stopped referring to it as self pollution, masturbation was still pretty much taboo 160 years after Sylvester Graham railed against it. At the 1994 United Nations conference on AIDS, then surgeon general Jocelyn Elders was asked about promoting masturbation to prevent young people from engaging in riskier sexual behavior. "I think that it is a part of human sexuality," Elders replied. "And perhaps it should be taught." Her answer, and the reaction to it, ultimately forced her to -
Huge Funding for Abstinence Programs
Congress authorizes $250 million for abstinence-only education as part of the welfare reform act. -
Abstinence Only Funding Rejected by 25 States
Twenty-five states have rejected federal funding for abstinence-only programs, based on evaluations that suggest that they don't have an impact on behavior.
