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Friday, April 19. 1991 / University Daily Kansan
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[If I had to teach full-time, I think I'd go crazy. If I traveled all the time, I know I'd go crazy. If I had to do therapy full-time, I'd go nuts, too. But being able to do all of these things makes me feel like I have died and gone to heaven."
Dennis Dailey
In teaching sex, Dennis Dailey doesn't screw around
Bv adding humor to his lectures. Dennis Dailey makes his sex education class entertaining.
By Shannon Peters
special to the nansan
Three hundred students sat in Wes-
een Auditorium, waiting for a film to begin.
Some talked quietly to people sitting around them; others sat without saying a word. After looking over the bus, a few students got up and left.
A few minutes later the lights were turned out and the film began. A picture of a man was projected onto the large screen in front of the class.
The students watching this film were in an undergraduate social welfare class titled "Human Sexuality in Everyday Life." taught by Dennis Dailey, professor of social welfare.
Humor and shock
Teaching the students how to mas turbate was one of many goals Dailey had for the semester. His class covers all aspects of sex education.
"It still remember the first day of class," said Carla Puky, Venezuela senator. "He told us that the goal of our class is to imagine our parents 'doing it.'"
Dailey's humorous, sometimes shocking, approach to sex puts his class in demand. Dailey said that the course reached its maximum enrollment of 308 students quickly and that all his students were juniors and seniors.
Michelle Volke, Wichita senior and a student of Dailey's, said, "it basically a senior class because it closes so quickly. Lots of people want to take it, and you have to get an early enrollment to get in."
Dailey said the demand for his class was high because fewer than 10 percent of all people had received sex education from their parents.
This deficiency of sex education in homes is what drew Dailey to teaching the subject. He teaches one graduate and one undergraduate
"Young people don't get near the comprehensive sex education they need to guarantee their healthy adult sexual relationships," he said. "I provide students a chance to learn what they didn't get anywhere else."
class each semester. He said he believed that professors should make the subjects they teach come alive.
"I think you can entertain and enlighten at the same time," Dailey said. "I've known some brilliant people who teach their way out of a paper sack."
Puky said Dailev did not have this problem. Dailey received the Chancellor's Professorship Award for Excellence in Teaching in 1990. Stories, examples and occasional jokes make his classroom lively.
"One time we were watching a film on the birthing process," Puky said. "A security guard came in looking for a guy from the class. Before the guard left, Dailey asked him. Would you like to stay and help us push?"
"Every class period is a memorable experience. His classes are always educational, but he makes them funny, too."
Dalley said his goal as a professor was to be a role model for at least one student.
'I hope that someday, some
human sexuality professor will be saying that part of the reason he or she is teaching is because of me, he said "If you get one person saying 'You believe you've done what you were supposed to do while you were here'."
The college classroom is not the only place where Dailey teaches about sex. He offers private sex therapy for both heterosexual and homosexual couples, and for more than 20 years he weekly talk show on KLZR radio. The program, "Let's Talk Sex," was discontinued in November.
Dailey said that if he could buy delay equipment, which would allow him to screen out joke calls, he probably would put the program back on the air. He said that if he had more spare time he would consider
"I was sorry to see it go, but there developed a lot of poke calls in the last few weeks," Dailey said. "I believe that show represented a real service. A lot of people were listening."
doing the show via a national satellite, with a toll-free telephone number
"It's a lot more work and requires sponsorship," he said. "You have to sell the program. Our hope is to at least get it back on in the Lawrence, Topela, Kansas City, Manhattan and Emporia area."
Dailey does not need the radio program to keep him busy. In addition to his other activities, he prepares for conferences all over the country.
His younger years
Dailey said that when he was a child, he did not dream he would be giving presentations, writing and teaching.
"When I was really small, up until I was in junior high school, I wanted to go back."
Dailey lived in small towns in Minnesota until he was 12, when his family moved to Minneapolis. His father changed occupations frequently, working as a barber, running a gas station and managing a little store. His mother took care of her brother, who is two years younger.
"I grew up in the woods and on the water," Dailey said. "A small town is a great place for a kid. You know anybody and everyone knows you."
When Dailey was in junior high, he became involved in church youth activities and attended church camps during the summer months.
“Out of that experience and a friendship with a youth minister, I decided to do people-work instead of teaching planes and computers,” he said.
Dailey said he went to Hammie University in St. Paul, Minn., with the intention of becoming a Methodist minister. However, while he was there he decided he would prefer a college. He left despite his strong religious faith. He changed his major and got a bachelor's degree in social work.
When he was a senior, he met Judi Brown, who was a freshman at Hamline. They were married after his graduation in 1960 and had two daughters, Lisa and Amy. Dailey went on to graduate school at the University of Missouri, where he got his master's degree in social work in 1963.
"If I was in the lounge and I heard someone say, 'about a Professor' and they kept him silent."
Forrest Swail, who is director of the social welfare bachelor's program and assistant professor of management at MU, gave MU and knew Dailey in the 1960s.
"He was a bright, energetic, inquiring young man," Swail said. He can teach because he makes sex lessons for students. He knows his material."
Dailey came to KU in 1969, after getting his doctorate in social work at Washington University in St. Louis. Judy Dailey went back to school and earned bachelor's and master's degrees in social work from KU. She worked as a teacher for a year. She said that it was interesting playing her dual role as wife and student but that she worried about caves-dropping on her classmates.
his wife, I would get up and leave," she said.
Heaven on earth
A wooden sign reading "Century Estates Erected 1883" stands in the front yard of the house that the Daileys call home. The red brick house with white shutters is surrounded by tall trees, a blackberry patch, a vegetable garden and a large red wooden barn. The house stands on five acres of land at 19th Street and Haskell Drive, and has been placed on the National Register of Historic Homes.
Inside the house are many antiques, collected by the Daileys.
"My special interest is in old Keenkitter tools and glass candy containers," Dalley said "I don't do anything with them. I just look at
Dailey said he spent his free time talking to his wife, who is a clinical social worker at Lawrence Memorial Hospital. Dailey said he also enjoyed going to KU basketball games and reading. He likes non-fiction books, especially biographies and feminist feature, and he also likes Ms. magazine.
"I read that magazine cover to cover," he said. "I can't wait for it to come each month."
Amy and Lisa Daisley, who now are 27 and 29, both graduated from KU and have moved from the house. Lisa went on to KU's law school and is employed by the NCAA, and Amy is a teacher at Baldwin Junior High School.
"They are incredibly neat when bailes are." They're two of my best.
Dailey said he considered himself a lucky person. Unlike many people who spend their lives in jobs they do not like. Dailey said he enjoyed what he was doing and had been happy with his life for many years.
"If I had to teach full-time, I think I'd go crazy," he said. "I I traveled all the time, I know I'd go crazy. If I had to do therapy full-time, I'd go nuts, too. But being able to do all of these things makes me feel like I have died and gone to heaven."
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