Sex education row in Great Britain
A sex education row has broken out in Great Britain. The Times reports on the debate in this widely-linked article, tendentiously and inaccurately headlined "Government urges under-16s to experiment with oral sex." Inside the article, we read:
The scheme, which has been pioneered by Exeter University and is backed by the Departments of Health and Education, trains teachers to discuss various pre-sex “stopping points” with under-age teenagers.
It aims to reduce promiscuity by encouraging pupils to discover “levels of intimacy”, including oral sex, instead of full sexual intercourse.
More than 100,000 children are now taking the course at one in every thirty secondary schools. It forms part of efforts to tackle Britain’s teenage pregnancy rate, which is the highest in Western Europe.
So the headline might just as well read, "Government urges under-16s to wait on intercourse." Nothing in the article suggests that sex education teachers using this program are "urging" kids to have oral sex. The Guardian article about the controversy quotes the program's director.
But John Rees, leader of A Pause, which is now running in 100 schools across the country, defended the project, saying it empowered young people and enabled them to understand their relationships and make better decisions.
He said: "Once you get past the titillating headlines, there is solid support for our programme. We shouldn't lose sight that amongst all this furore this is the only programme in Europe that has actually worked."
Research published in the British Medical Journal in 1995 showed that the programme had cut the rates of unprotected sex a year after pupils had completed the course.
"We want to promote the positive aspects of relationships - emotional and physical," added Mr Rees. "It's very easy for young people to presume that all 16-years-olds are sexually active; the important thing is to get them to talk about what makes a good relationship. We show them how to stop being swooped along in a tide of passion, or assuming that everyone else is doing it. We want them to resist unwanted pressure."
Sounds reasonable to me. Pretending that teenagers are asexual beings, who must be kept ignorant of sex lest that information corrupt them, is stupid and cruel.
