Sex ed: what do children need to know?

For a few years, as part of World Contraception Day, I spent some time talking to schoolchildren about sex, said Stuart Heritage in The Guardian. “The misinformation I encountered was catastrophic.” I met teenagers who thought you couldn’t get pregnant if you had sex standing up; and others who believed that a post-coital douche of Coca-cola was an effective form of contraception. “One particularly bleak morning in Maidstone, I found myself arguing with a teenager who maintained that, in an emergency, a crisp packet would be a fine alternative to a condom.” Teaching children about sex – as well as relationships, consent, privacy and safety – is more “vitally important” than ever in the internet age. So thank heavens for Justine Greening, the Education Secretary, who last week unveiled the biggest shake-up of sex education in two decades. From four years old, children will be given “age appropriate” lessons on online safety and healthy relationships. Sex education – covering everything from consent to sexting – will be compulsory in secondary schools.

This decision has been taken with “the best motives”, said The Daily Telegraph, but questions remain. How will the subject be taught? Will there be any moral element to it, and if so, whose morality will prevail? On matters such as gender and sexuality, “opinions that a few years ago would have been considered uncontentious are now seen as borderline criminal”. Teachers know that “saying anything that fails to conform to the prevailing sexual orthodoxies (as determined by campaigners and activists) could result in the sack, or worse”. There is a place for sex education in schools, certainly, “but the principal guides for children on this subject, and on relationships in general, should be parents”.

On the contrary, said Janet Street-porter in The Independent: most parents are hopeless at talking to their children about sex in an honest and dispassionate way. The result? An epidemic of self-harm, mental illness and abuse. By the age of 16, two-thirds of young people in the UK have watched porn online; and a recent study found that 41% of free online porn features violence against women. Digital technology has facilitated bullying, coercion and misogyny: 44% of 14-17-year-old girls have “sexted” a sexual image of themselves, and 42% of those had their image sent on to others without their consent. Teachers are the only people capable of halting these trends: “they spend far more time with children than most parents”, and are trained in teaching appropriate behaviour. “Some things should never be entrusted to parents, and sex education is one of them.”