Sex Dummification
Activists attempt to prevent relationship and sexual health lessons in the UK. Will this be another glorious victory for the ignorant and misinformed? Sex Education – may be some parent’s worst nightmare, but at 15 Square, we believe it is the right direction to a better-informed society.
Parents who are looking for information on how to best care, educate and provide for their children will know all too well that the advice out there is a minefield of different opinions.
Never has there been such an overwhelming flood of conflicting advice, everything from Twitter to Ticktock, Instagram to Snapchat has everyone shouting their opinions from the pulpits of our online world. With the government’s new curriculum on Relationships and Sex Education (RSE) compulsory from September and the summer holidays already in full swing, it is vital that parents have the tools they need to navigate the open waters of opinion vs fact!
15 Square has been inundated over the years with queries from teenagers on how they can best care for their own body, all too often seeking out answers on the web over talking to their parents and carers is how kids find out what used to be the dreaded birds and bees talk.
Sex Education
Learning about the body requires proper resources, and yes that will mean pictures of properly labelled anatomically correct genitalia, that has been produced with teaching young people in mind. There is little point to teaching 11-18-year-old’s the practicalities of life with diagrams so clinical and complex that they are meant for medical school students, nor is there any value in universally blacklisting all sex education materials. Young people need age-appropriate facts.
-There is a petition circulating from ‘The Values Foundation’ who are angry at the curriculum changes set to roll out in the new school year over Relationships and Sex Education (RSE). These age-appropriate lessons will be compulsory! Relationships will be compulsory for primary school children while the full curriculum of Relationship and Sex Education (RSE) is to be compulsory for all secondary pupils.
Lobbying against Sex Education and disguising it as religious freedom and “traditional moral beliefs” can do serious harm and disservice to young people. Additionally, these “traditional moral beliefs” have included the persecution and harassment of people who do not confirm to this one-dimensional viewpoint.
Central to our work at 15 Square, censorship of Sex Education will amount to children continuing to grow up not knowing the basic functions of their own body, and leads to compromising situations regarding sexual health. Did you know many adult men don’t know that the foreskin is fused to the glans sometimes until adolescence?
The new curriculum
“At a secondary level, the RSE curriculum is introducing children as young as 13 to p0rnography and explicit graphic sexual content where they are encouraged to experiment with and explore niche adult practices,” – That’s right, they were scared to write pornography with a letter “o”.
We know from years of research (see citations below) that we need to diversify our materials to ensure we provide information that will allow pupils to learn as they develop. If not we do young people the disservice of not treating them like the intelligent, thoughtful human beings they are capable of becoming.
At 15 Square we believe that boys should grow up knowing the difference between an intact and circumcised penis. They should not reach adulthood without understanding what the foreskin is. They should know how to resolve common problems without causing themselves damage. This requires conversations about how the penis grows and develops and what the function and purpose is.
Censoring sensitive subjects would mean important issues such as FGM would never have been taught to students, meaning cultural ignorance may still allow harm to continue.
One of our main missions is to educate people so that they know what to do in different circumstances. Most of us know some form of basic first aid, how to apply a sticking plaster or why it is important to wash our hands frequently, especially important right now with Covid-19 still affecting our daily lives. We want the same level of knowledge around foreskin health and care. Intact boys should understand how to maintain hygiene, and how to spot any issues that might arise during development.
The same applies to circumcised boys, they have the right to know how to care for any common issues that may arise as they mature and how to manage them appropriately unique to their condition.
People with a penis need to know these things so they can care for their own body, children grow into adults who may become parents, and they will need to know so that they can properly care for future generations. Education should be diverse and encompass as many perspectives as is reasonable so that pupils will be properly informed and can only lead to better-informed adults, however teaching kids about sex should not come with the gatekeeping marriage, commitment and chastity only viewpoint in what some will call “traditional moral values” if parents feel this is needed they are free to complement the curriculum their children get at school with their own views and allow children to make their own minds up.
While all have the duty to keep children safe, we also have the duty to give them the tools they need to navigate the world safely. This includes a scientifically sound curriculum of sex education. Why? It’s been proven to help. A diverse understanding of relationships and the complexities of human interaction can help us progress in the right direction.
We should always endeavour to give our children the best scientific information available and trust that we have done a good job in raising curious and intelligent citizens who can critically think for themselves and decide what is right for them.
Many parents still take the time to have this discussion with their children, and what they choose to include or exclude from “the talk” is more than likely based on their belief and cultural structure.
Whilst every person has the right to practice their religion, we must be mindful of how these ‘freedoms’ impact a child’s future. 15 Square want a world where children are educated, healthy, and autonomous.
RSE is to include lessons on “sex, sexuality and sexual health” A topic that is at the core of the work that 15 Square does every day, the information available in a suitable format for young people is shockingly poor, so we applaud the Education Authority in these efforts to drastically improve the quality of this area of the curriculum.
Citations
Gill Lenderyou (1994) Sex education: A school-based perspective, Sexual and Marital Therapy, 9:2, 127-144,
DOI: 10.1080/02674659408409576
Jane Lewis & Trudie Knijn (2003) Sex Education Materials in The Netherlands and in England and Wales: A comparison of content, use and teaching practice, Oxford Review of Education, 29:1, 113-150,
Michael J. Reiss (1995) Conflicting Philosophies of School Sex Education, Journal of Moral Education, 24:4, 371-382,
Walker, J. L. (2001). A qualitative study of parents’ experiences of providing sex education for their children: The implications for health education. Health Education Journal, 60(2), 132–146. DOI:10.1177/001789690106000205
Well said.