A New York City education will now cover readin’, ’ritin’ — and rubbers.
Sex ed, which becomes mandatory in city middle and high schools next year, is meant to stem unplanned pregnancies and sexually transmitted diseases among teens. But parents may be shocked by parts of the Department of Education’s “recommended” curriculum.
Workbooks reviewed by The Post include the following assignments:
* High-school students go to stores and jot down condom brands, prices and features such as lubrication.
* Teens research a route from school to a clinic that provides birth control and STD tests, and write down its confidentiality policy.
* Kids ages 11 and 12 sort “risk cards” to rate the safety of various activities, including “intercourse using a condom and an oil-based lubricant,’’ mutual masturbation, French kissing, oral sex and anal sex.
* Teens are referred to resources such as Columbia University’s Web site Go Ask Alice, which explores topics like “doggie-style” and other positions, “sadomasochistic sex play,” phone sex, oral sex with braces, fetishes, porn stars, vibrators and bestiality.
Told of the subjects her son could learn about, one Manhattan middle-school mom said, “They seem pretty outrageous.”
Shino Tanikawa, a SoHo mother of two daughters, including a high-school junior, also was taken aback.
“I didn’t know how much detail they would get,” she said.
But she added that many city kids learn about hanky-panky on their own.
Starting in the spring, the DOE will require one semester of sex ed in sixth or seventh grades and one in ninth or 10th.
It says schools can pick any curriculum but recommends the widely used HealthSmart and Reducing the Risk programs and trains teachers to use them.
The curriculum “stresses that abstinence is the best way to avoid pregnancy and STD/HIV,” the DOE said.
Lessons include role playing on resisting sexual advances and advice on “negotiating condom use” with a partner.
The DOE says parents have the right to exclude their kids from lessons on “methods of prevention.”
“Kids are being told to either abstain or use condoms — that both are responsible, healthy choices,” said child and adolescent psychiatrist Miriam Grossman, author of “You’re Teaching My Child What?”
The DOE “relies on latex,” she said.
But Grossman argues that the books minimize the dangers that pregnancy can still occur with condom use, and that viruses such as herpes and HPV live on body parts not covered by a condom.