How and what should children be taught about sex and sexuality?
Comprehensive Sexuality Education (CSE) was implemented in SA schools in 2000 as part of Life Orientation to contribute positively to adolescent sexual health in a holistic manner.
But is it succeeding?
Catriona Macleod, a Rhodes University psychology professor and SARChl Chair in Critical Studies in Sexuality and Reproduction, recently delivered a lecture to the Friends of the Library titled, ‘How school-based sexuality education fails South African youth'.
Macleod said many young people receive lessons on sexuality in schools, which is still the best way to reach most of the country's youth. But, she pointed to four problematic themes in the sexuality education curriculum.
1. Disconnection
There is an apparent disconnect between what children learn at school and what they practise outside.
Macleod said learners found the content did not echo the complexities of their lives. It was “irrelevant” and “disconnected”. The curriculum is heavily focused on abstinence – the ideal learner is presented as a-sexual or alternatively ‘innocent'. The teaching style is teacher-centred and not relational. Messages do not connect with experiences of what learners want to be doing in the world.
Learners are looking for stories and clear examples. They want to ask questions.
2. Sexuality education emphasises danger, disease and damage
“The fundamental premise of a lot of sexuality education is risk talk,” MacLeod said. Learners are taught that sexual engagement carries a risk of getting a disease. The damage discourse centres on the idea that your life is damaged if you get pregnant as a young woman. There is also the danger of being exposed to sexual violence.
“The message is, ‘Don't get pregnant, don't get a disease, don't have sex, don't destroy your life'. It's negative messaging.”
The curriculum is also often taught through a series of moral injunctions. The billboard below by the Department of Health exemplifies the kind of messages and priorities that are impressed on learners.
MacLeod said the messaging is often directed exclusively at girls. It places the responsibility on girls for any occurrence of coercive sex, transactional sex and sexual violence. It puts pressure on girls and individuals to prevent the risks and dangers of sexual engagements rather than addressing any social and gendered dynamics that lead to this.
For example, in transactional sex, where women and girls engage in sexual activities with primarily men older than themselves in exchange for gifts and money, the curriculum does not consider that for many young women, transactional sex is for survival. This often occurs in disadvantaged communities where women use transactional sex to feed their families. The lessons only serve to make girls take the blame and feel guilty. “It positions them as the bad person as opposed to the system in which their source of income is through transactional sex.”