So you approve of education via hearsay with no boundaries to ensure this is correct? With no across the board standards? So when all of the rumours are true except one, in one school, where they put across old chestnuts like “you can get pregnant if you use the same bathwater” and such like, you’re happy with this?

“My guess is that most sexually active teenagers know how to put on a condom – some simply choose not to – or they are drunk or whatever.”

And why do they choose not to? Do playground rumours extend as far as the real dangers of STDs? From my experience condoms are more linked to pregnancy than STDs when it comes to young attitudes, and with knowledge of the pill and the pervasiveness of it in society that is (purely my opinion) where the lack of safe sex comes from. Education can help change that, leaving it to kids to gossip through to the truth only might.

“My guess is that poor behaviour (drinking, screwing, fighting, truancy etc) among young people in this country is more likely to be a symptom of wider problems than the wrong sort of sex education.”

But providing simple sex education, which doesn’t take up a huge amount of time, or even a reasonable amount of time, isn’t mutually exclusive of working out how to tackle the wider problems either is it? There’s no need to say we should abandon fussing about SRE just because there are bigger fish to fry, we’d never get anything done.

And for what it’s worth my two cents are that a) teenagers aren’t given enough respect to be talked to like an adult about sex, and thus they choose to learn by experience and b) arbitrary ages of consent that hinder like-age relationships only push a rebellious natured section of society to…you know…rebel. But as you may be able to tell, I feel that SRE is something that can help smooth out one of those issues.

I’m not sure that I understand your final contention. It only follows that sex education should be started earlier if a) playground gossip is inaccurate and b) sex education is started so late that there is a real risk of children starting to have sex (or come under pressure to have sex) before the false impressions formed in the playground are corrected.

My contention is that such gossip is more accurate than we give it credit for – I don’t recall hearing anything that was really wrong and, reading between the lines of the kids quoted in the UKYP report, it sounds as if they felt they were going over things they knew in their existing classes. That being the case, I don’t see the case for either allowing the subject to take up more precious school time or central government setting a one-size-fits all solution for a difficult and sensitive subject.

I suppose my wider point is this. I don’t think the SRE regime has that much to do with the levels of STDs and unwanted pregnancies. My guess is that most sexually active teenagers know how to put on a condom – some simply choose not to – or they are drunk or whatever.

It has earlier been noted that the Netherlands have far lower levels of both STDs and unwanted pregnancies and spend about the same amount of time on their SRE classes that we do. It seems to me much more likely that lower levels of risky behaviour among Dutch teens probably has more to do with the wider ethos of the country. You will recall the recent survey that found British and American children to be less happy than their counterparts in any other developed nation.

My guess is that poor behaviour (drinking, screwing, fighting, truancy etc) among young people in this country is more likely to be a symptom of wider problems than the wrong sort of sex education. Shouldn’t we be addressing that rather than asking unspecified to tell us at what age it is appropriate to explain fellatio to children? (Especially since the answer will be, “it depends”)

I suspect there is more to teenage pregnancy rates than simple school based sex education. The fact that “The Sun” is our most popular paper and in some ways “The daily Mail” is our most influential middle class paper is probably as much of a problem.

I find it quite bizarre that people accept the argument that telling kids about homosexuality will suddenly convert millions of kids into homosexuals. Given that schools didn’t even mention it for hundreds of years, yet it still existed gives lie to this myth. Telling children with homosexual tendencies that they are weirdo’s, evil or perverted is not constructive. This seems to be what many of the more outlandish conservative commentators would prefer.

I’d suggest that the context of sex education is what we need to have a continuing debate, rather than the mechanics. I’d suggest that all schools should have counselling services, trained to deal with all manner of issues. Identification of areas where bullying may occur and prevention of this is also a primary concern. I would see some of the irrational right wing comment in this context.

I would like to see sex taught in the context of relationships, especially for 10-16 year olds. If they want to be promiscuous they soon will figure that out for themselves, but sex in a stable relationship is generally safer and more responsible for teenagers, whilst not necessarily being less enjoyable. Some level of education about the effects of drink & drugs on relationships & sexual behaviour should also be included, as many of the problems people have are related to these issues.

There may be a discussion to be had about the format (mine was never worksheets, it was round table discussions, videos and those cliched condom on banana exercises) and how best to educate kids through sexual education, but can we be sure even the majority of children are informed enough about all necessary areas of sexual education to a standard above watching some porn they downloaded and discussing through chinese whispers with their friends? Do the kids that say they knew everything beforehand really understand the (if you’ll pardon the pun) ins and outs of it all?

Assuming they are of course stating the truth then it’s a pretty strong case for moving sex education to earlier years, to a time before what they “know” is found out from a myriad of sources of indeterminable accuracy, is it not?

clearly some parents don’t give their kids the best start in life and some others will pass on to their children ideas that we mght wish they hadn’t but if the state considers itself the final arbiter of morality then we are surely all in trouble.

Rather than telling children that what their teacher tells them is “truer” than what their parents tell them, we should surely be ensuring that they have the critical skills to evaluate the information they receive from all sources.

for what it is worth, and to get us back to SRE, I still await a single answer to the questions, name one thing that you learned in sex education that you had not known before or one thing that you feel your sex education teacher could reasonably have been expected to tell you but didn’t.

They’ve already done that, to the detriment of the Physics curriculum.

Many parents don’t have any idea how to raise children, that’s certainly true, and it would be great if there were experts who could raise them in school in such cases – but there aren’t.

I’m sceptical of the power of the curriculum in general, I don’t think a 1 hour a week lesson is going to have much success in getting teenagers to have less sex, although neither is it going to make them have more sex or lead to the breakdown of society. teaching people how to use contraceptives (many people literally can’t manage it…) seems sensible, but beyond that I don’t think there’s much we can do.

basically I think politicians should leave this obsession with sex to the bedroom and worry about global warming instead.

It’s not really that simple, moral education is something that should be provided by parents. This is why I disagree with schools teaching one religion if that school is the only realistic choice for a child to go to. I do agree with broad religious theory and philosophy being taught on the flip side and believe that parents don’t necessarily have the knowledge or inclination to provide that, in my opinion vital, set of lessons to ensure understanding and acceptance of those different from them.

There are plenty of ways to teach social cohesion, and further on the sexual education also, without getting in to morals…I think people are getting too caught up that education about these things can’t be extricated from moral education which isn’t…to my mind..the truth. Happy to be proved wrong.

If so, would parents or experts bear the principal responsibility for the formation of children’s moral character?

Is it your view that experts agree about child rearing (or, indeed moral character)?

Totally agree, I’ve argued on here before that policy shouldn’t even make it to a vote before it’s been attached to a report given by objective and independent people. Hell, I’d even give them, assuming the right checks and balances, a veto on policy.

http://www.bmj.com/cgi/content/abstract/335/7613/248

I would say that if a politician proposed introducing such a program, they would be wrong. Just flat out wrong, like if the agriculture minister planned to bring rains by dancing around in circles, or if the defence minister proposed replacing the air force with guys on flying pigs.

Democracy isn’t scientific.

Deomcracy isn’t scientific.

I’m talking about science. If an expert can say that age 5 is the right age to do this then that’s the right age to do it. Now I’d love to believe the curriculum will be objectively and expertly produced given the sensitivity of such a situation but I may have doubts that you share about that…but I was purely talking about whether or not these kids should be taught that subject, at that age, in school…if the experts say yes, then it should be done.

No. I think there needs to be a distinction between the use of ‘expert’ in the context of something like science/maths/home repairs or whatever, where there’s a “right answer” and objective standards, and that in social policy, where there isn’t.

‘Expert’ in the kind of context of this debate too often means “someone who backs up my argument, perhaps with the help of some numbers”.

Returning to the topic of discussion: @Aaron you may be right in suggesting that “most [parents] don’t really know what they’re doing”. However that is a pretty contentious thing to say and base policy on, don’t you think.

Don’t you think at the very least this move could have been handled with a greater level of sensitivity? This Government seems to think “we are right and you are wrong, so we’ll go ahead with what we think is right and f*ck you”, all the time. This proposal is like sticking two fingers up in the faces of anti-statists.

The most important elements of it could have been introduced gradually, through minor alterations of the existing curriculum, and this would have averted the vast majority of the controversy. But that wouldn’t have pissed off conservatives, so clearly it’s not good enough.

But maybe fact was the wrong word to use.

I probably agree with the underpinning argument you’re making. But a more legitimate ‘crux’ would be to accept that the majority of parents haven’t got a clue.

It’s a fair ideological argument to say that government has no place to teach these things, but to suggest that the average parent has any higher knowledge belies the more reasonable assumption that most don’t really know what they’re doing.

‘experts’

I hate this.

Lazy anti-intellectualism. I suppose I should ignore my ‘doctor’ and my ‘electrician’?

Why, exactly, should ‘experts’ have more say over the upbringing of an individual child than his/her parents?

That is the crux of this debate. Not percentages and evidence bases.