Sex Education in Schools

With an election due later this year, the UK Govt is creating topics for an election debate that are guaranteed to stir controversy, on the basis that the Conservatives are right to limit sex education in general, and education on Transgender issues in particular.

It doesn't help if the person in charge when asked about the issues doesn't know, thus-

"Writing in the Sun, the education secretary, Gillian Keegan, vowed that “never again will young girls be led to believe they might be happier if they were a boy, or children to think there are 72 genders”. But when asked by the BBC how often inappropriate material is taught in schools, the best Keegan could offer was “I don’t know”, before insisting she wouldn’t shy away from tackling what might or might not actually be a problem. If anyone’s struggling with the facts of life here, it arguably isn’t teenagers."
Sex education is now just another political football. For the children’s sake, the adults must grow up | Gaby Hinsliff | The Guardian

I don't know how this works in other countries, but I imagine in the US it depends on the State, and suspect that those so-called 'Conservatives' are not much different from our sort, in that they tend first to panic, and then make policy.

That said, we didn't have sex education in the schools I went to (on two different continents I night add), and in my teens when it was raised as a topic I was terrified and embarrassed, whereas these days the issues revolve around the instant availability of images and video on smart phones and thus have created a different agenda from what I had.

I believe in the past, when it was introduced, I think in the 1970s in the UK, one primary aim was to prevent unwanted pregnancies, with STD's only a secondary issue. Since then, I think the focus has been on the negotiation of relationships designed to equalize attitudes between boys and girls, and discussions of same-sex thoughts and behaviour and Transgender issues has become relevant, but I don't know how it's done, so I am as ignorant on this as Gillian Keegan.

Some of the questions are:
Should sex education be on the curriculum at any age?
At what age should sex education begin?
Should sex education focus on sexual acts, and/or the social milieu in which they take place -how to behave in class, the playground, the Mall, a club etc?
What materials should be used in sex education, how are they to be vetted, and what happens if parents for reasons that might be religious or moral, object to what their children are given to read?

I think this is a minefield, and I am glad I don't have to make the decisions, but if there is some good to be had from teaching children elementary respect for each other, I would support it.

This teacher has a more hands-on approach which may appeal?

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-englan...ester-69026069

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Originally Posted by rodinuk

This teacher has a more hands-on approach which may appeal?

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-englan...ester-69026069

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Isn't that what Flaubert would call a 'sentimental education'?

This might be closer to the point of the thread. But does not resolve the problem of curious pre-or-teens.

My daughter had her first sex education lesson aged 10 – she (and I) were shocked (yahoo.com)

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Originally Posted by Stavros

…I don't know how this works in other countries, but I imagine in the US it depends on the State, and suspect that those so-called 'Conservatives' are not much different from our sort, in that they tend first to panic, and then make policy.

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I don’t think they are the same, a lot more of them are bat-shit crazy and a lot are too lazy to think about it

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Originally Posted by Stavros

That said, we didn't have sex education in the schools I went to (on two different continents I night add), and in my teens when it was raised as a topic I was terrified and embarrassed, whereas these days the issues revolve around the instant availability of images and video on smart phones and thus have created a different agenda from what I had.

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I did have sex education in both primary(aged 10) and (single-sex) secondary schools although we had to request it in the latter and was just impromptu in a biology lesson. It focussed purely on the biology rather than relationships et al. My old man had the ‘talk’ with me when I was 16 which was cringeworthy and non-existent as he was mighty relieved to hear I’d had it at school and this is part of the whole issue in that parents ignore it relying on the school to deliver it. My first enquiries into this ‘forbidden’ world (which of course raises your curiosity) were around age of 10 enabled by my parents dumping me in the children’s section of the library with easy access to the relevant books and reading an article on the front of the Daily Telegraph lying around at home about a female teacher engaging in masturbation with an underage boy. So the availability of the material was already there albeit in much milder forms than today.

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Originally Posted by Stavros

I think this is a minefield, and I am glad I don't have to make the decisions, but if there is some good to be had from teaching children elementary respect for each other, I would support it.

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I think you need to teach children respect from the get-go as I was a human punchbag from age 5. I don’t think that’s changed

We might agree that sex education at an early age should focus on the science of reproduction, though I am not sure at what age this should begin, and it doesn't deal with the curiosity of children and how their parents answer questions about sex related issues. In my childhood when the subject was raised, it was riddle with threats and implications of sin or bad behaviour -we were regular church goers (twice on Sunday) and though not Roman Catholic the belief imparted was that sex before marriage was wrong -I later found out someone in the family did not know who her father was, and that another was born less than 9 months after her parents marriage -is this moral guilt of adults being imposed on children?

Should parents have a say in what happens in school? Probably, but should they design or seek to edit the curriculum? I think this is one grey area which has not been explored. That Mums organization in the US is determined, it seems, to structure a child's education in accordance with their interpretations of the Bible, just as some Muslim parents in the UK are terrified of their children being taught something that cannot be reconciled with their interpretation of the Quran. The secular view, which is the most rational, is that children get a curriculum broad enough to give them skills for life, with enough space for parents, if they want to, to school their children in their religion, but not on the school's time.

In the 1980s when it was a global panic, there was a book out called 'AIDS and the New Puritanism' -it argued that the 'permissive' revolution of the 1960s and 1970s had come to an end, that 'free love' had its downfall, and we were all destined for a life or sexual austerity -and it never happened, because medicine and people adapting took over.

I don't know that this helps move the argument forward, but it's the best I can do today.