Before 1991, sexual education in Belgium was strictly gender-segregated. Boys learned about "wet dreams" from male sports coaches; girls learned about menstruation from nuns in the nurse’s office. The 1991 program shattered this tradition by introducing mixed-gender classrooms for the first two modules.

The Anatomy Flip-Chart (Flemish/Dutch edition) The exclusive 1991 materials featured hand-drawn, watercolor anatomical charts. Unlike the clinical diagrams of the 1980s, these illustrations showed real body hair, varying breast sizes, and uncircumcised penises. Notably, the 1991 chart was the first to include a diagram of the clitoris labeled as such—a radical act at the time, leading to angry editorials in Le Soir.

The "Wonder Weeks" Film Strip In French-speaking Wallonia, students were shown a 16mm film titled Les Semaines Merveilleuses. It followed two fictional teens, Marc (14) and Sophie (13), over eight weeks. The exclusive footage showed Marc dealing with spontaneous erections during a school presentation, and Sophie tracking her cycle on a kitchen calendar. Crucially, the 1991 film normalized the emotional volatility of puberty—showing both boys crying and girls feeling aggression—breaking strict gender stereotypes.

Many teens begin writing or roleplaying romantic stories (fanfic, D&D romance, journaling, or even AI chatbots). This is healthy exploration if guided.

Guidelines to share:

Discussion prompt: “If you were friends with the main character, what would you tell them about their love interest?”

In 1991, Belgian boys were the primary target of reform. Prior to this, male puberty education focused solely on voice change and growth spurts. The exclusive 1991 curriculum added three revolutionary topics:

Young people learn relationship scripts from:

These narratives often emphasize destiny, jealousy, mind-reading, and love conquering all boundaries—scripts that correlate with unhealthy real-world dynamics (stalking, possessiveness, loss of self).

Puberty is often framed as a crisis of the body, but for most young people, it is equally a crisis of the heart. First romantic attractions emerge between ages 10 and 14, coinciding with peak puberty onset. Yet most sex education programs address romantic relationships only as risks (pregnancy, STIs, heartbreak) rather than as developmental opportunities. Concurrently, adolescents consume thousands of hours of romantic storylines—from Disney movies to YA novels to dating reality shows—which become de facto relationship education. This paper asks: How can puberty education deliberately use romantic narratives to teach ethical, healthy relationship skills?

To grasp the "exclusive" nature of the 1991 curriculum, one must understand the fear that preceded it. The late 1980s saw the peak of the AIDS crisis and a sharp rise in teen pregnancies across industrial Europe. Belgium, caught between the conservative Catholic remnants of the South and the progressive secularism of the North, was paralyzed.

By 1990, data showed that nearly 40% of Belgian teens received zero formal instruction about their changing bodies before the age of 14. The government finally broke the deadlock. The result was "La Vie en Rouge & Bloeiende Jongens" (Life in Red & Blooming Boys)—an exclusive, state-sponsored toolkit distributed to only 200 test schools in 1991.