Back in January, I was teaching year 10 (age 14-15 for those out of the loop) on the day that they had been given the letters for their vaccinations. All kids had letters for polio vacs, and the girls also had letters about the new cervical cancer injection.
One boy asked me if the injections hurt, and I told them that, since I was the biggest wimp I knew and I'd thought they were ok, he'd be fine. Then he said:
"What about the cervical cancer one?"
Straight face, straight face, I whispered to myself. "Well, you won't get that, only the girls have that."
Boy: "Why? Won't I get cervical cancer?"
"No."
Boy: "Why?"
"Because you don't have a cervix."
"What IS a cervix?"
None of my teacher training ever prepared me for that. I left it at 'the cervix is at the entrance to the womb on girls' and swiftly steered him back to German - oh yes, all of this came in a German lesson of all places! But what it did make me realise, because this boy was deadly serious, is that maybe we assume our teenagers know more than they do. None of the girls in the class who he also asked had told him what a cervix was either. So perhaps we need a little more freedom of information. Although, had he been clued up, I would have been a litlle starved of laughs that day.
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