Checking Up on Health Education the Comprehensive Curriculum to Teach Duval County Students about Their Bodies Is Settling in the Classroom with Little Controversy

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The subject matter of the day, date rape, was written on the

blackboard.

That morning 30 high school students would consider sexual

pressure, perceptions of behavior, choice of clothing, locker

room bravado and the effects of drinking alcohol.

The class, Personal, Social and Family Relationships, is

required for all 11th-graders and serves as the final

installment of comprehensive health education in Duval County.

It includes some of the most controversial lessons taught in

public schools: sexual harassment, divorce, domestic violence,

abortion, contraception.

In 1996, when the Duval County School Board adopted a

comprehensive curriculum to educate students about their bodies,

social pressures and relationships, years of hand-wringing came

to an end.

At the time, critics alternately labeled the curriculum ungodly

or overly meek. But a year after the changes took effect, little

criticism is heard.

Although school surveys have not been collected, informal

counts indicate few parents exercised their right last year to

remove their children from the reproductive health and

AIDS-related instruction, said Kathy Bowles, Jacksonville

schools' supervisor of health education.

The curriculum is abstinence-based, but it includes discussion

of the use of contraceptives, an element that was lacking in the

previous health education plan taught in Duval County.

The School Board …