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timmy
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Has no life at all |
Location: UK, in Devon
Registered: February 2003
Messages: 13800
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I have no idea what should be taught to kids, nor at what age, nor by whom.
Do we teach them sex in isolation like football? Do we describe masturbation? Do we show sexually explicit but clinical videos? Do we teach love (If so, why? If not, why not?). How do we teach about homosexuality or transgender issues?
Author of Queer Me! Halfway Between Flying and Crying - the true story of life for a gay boy in the Swinging Sixties in a British all male Public School
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timmy
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Has no life at all |
Location: UK, in Devon
Registered: February 2003
Messages: 13800
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I was thinking back to my own sex education.
There was a lot of rudimentary information and misinformation in the schoolyard. No-one had the slightest idea what a rubber johnny was, and we had the vaguest idea of anatomy of girls. To be fair at the age I'm describing, 10 or so, there isn't a great deal to see.
The school decided it was going to teach us about sex. Dr Kilner, the parent of a couple of the boys, the older of whom I later fancied something rotten despite his being older than I was, came in and spoke at us. Not to us, but at us.
I don't remember the lecture at all. I do remember Jonathan Tregilgas asking "Please sir, what does 'bugger' mean?" but I don't recall the dismissive answer.
After thsi talk my great friend Michael bailey went home and told his parents how disgusting they were to have done this. I htink he refused to speak to them for a few days. He also vowed never to have sex.
Before that my ever practical parents had told me tbat a bay came out form a hole between the woman's legs (I could not picture this at all, and had mental images of a kind of knot hole, as in wooden planks), but never told me how it got in there in the first place. They did buy me, for the glorious sum of one shilling a 'Family Doctor Booklet' by Roger Pilkington MD, published by the British Medical Association entitled The facts of Life.
This described a lot about banana fruit flies, a section entitled 'it started with an egg' and some useless diagrams about boys and girls. If I still had it that shilling would now have turned into £4.50 on the antique books market. It revealed to me that sex was boring, required eggs, and resulted in children.
Later they bought, now for one shilling and sixpence 'The 15+ facts of Life'.
The talk, the booklets and their answers to my questions all gave me data but no information. It was all rather tedious and dry stuff. And we all thought that sex was a dirty little secret. We were also sure that homosexuality was very bad indeed and that you would go straight to hell for it. Except we had no idea what it was.
Author of Queer Me! Halfway Between Flying and Crying - the true story of life for a gay boy in the Swinging Sixties in a British all male Public School
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I learnt the purely biological facts of life in my second-to-large year at prep school, aged 11-12. As for the rest, I was never taught them, either at home or at school. I've picked up many of them by myself, but still not all.
I was never taught, either by a parent or a teacher, anything about relationships, love, masturbation or homosexuality. Particularly not homosexuality. I can remember an English teacher referring to homosexuality as 'unhealthy' when a reference was encountered in literature. I remember it chiefly because otherwise it was mentioned by the staff so little.
At secondary school, at 15 or 16, we had something called 'PSE' (Personal and Social Education) which was intended by the government to be used to discuss relationships, among other things, but as far as I remember mostly it concerned alcohol, smoking and drugs, which weren't very interesting to me (and still aren't). The teachers tended to steer clear of relationships as much as they could. Perhaps they assumed that by that age we would already know enough. Sadly the subject became something of a joke, among both the boys and the teachers, and the subjects covered were all tame and self-evident.
I do feel that I could almost certainly have discussed some of these things profitably with a teacher, but I never did. What's more, I am pretty sure that I never would have done because the school managed to make them into a taboo subject by never acknowledging them, even in passing. Which is a shame, because a subject that is never acknowledged is far harder to raise than one that is encountered all the time (even if in very shallow depth).
The first step towards improvement would have been if the school had taken care not to exclude subjects from mention because they were awkward. In fact, the more awkward a subject the more important it is that it is mentioned; if it's a common issue, it should be acknowledged freely rather than swept under the carpet. Homosexuality and transsexuality have the added problem that not all teachers would feel either equipped to talk about it, or they might feel that the the subject was unimportant as it would be irrelevant for the vast majority of their charges. The justification may be true but the conclusion is entirely invalid. The few that do need acknowledgement need it far more than the majority, who receive it as a matter of course.
David
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My sex education at school was taught by a very embarrassed young Mr Hart who, the previous vacation, had got married. I don't remember it at all. One of the boys had just been 'given' a baby sister and he got teased about what his parents must have been doing about nine months ago.
I think that children at the ages of 2, 3, 4 and so on are very curious about where they came from and most parents fob them off with gooseberry bushes or storks and they get the message that it is embarrassing and stop asking. I think that must have happened to me. How otherwise could one reach the age of puberty in such ignorance that erections were alarming and first ejaculations frightening? I certainly never dared ask what they were.
My policy would be 'answer all questions as fully as the child wants and in appropriate language according to the age of the child' and try not to close off the discussion so that it can be ongoing and supplementary questions can be asked at any time. Don't for example change the subject out of embarrassment - that would deter further questions for sure. And the policy would be followed as soon as they can talk.
But that requires parents to overcome their shyness. I wonder what proportion of parents can do that. Anyway it makes sex education a lifelong task which is what I think it ought to be. One ought not to remember learning the facts of life as a red-letter day but such knowledge ought to seem to have always been there.
The other day I was told off for talking about my erectile dysfunction tablets with an unmarried female friend who complained that everyone could hear me and that we were getting strange looks! I mean WTF - why shouldn't I talk about it; I'm the one who can't do it any more!
And if it did seem like that and children knew from their earliest memories that there were some people who found the same sex attractive, then there would be no reason for fear about homosexuality and probably no homophobia. I suspect that there would also be no lads magazines and the nature of football yobbery would be quite different. Maybe, too, the market for pole-dancing would be smaller. The war between the sexes might be less fierce too.
One thing I wish I had known about was the comparative anatomy of men and women - which male bits correspond to which female bits and where the nerve endings are densest and so on. Even gay men ought to know about such things.
And I wonder where it is really right (as distinct from socially acceptable) to draw the line. What if the child asks for a demonstration?
Anyway I think that your friend Michael Bailey had plainly been done quite serious damage by being kept in ignorance. Surely such shocks must always do harm?
I fear I've gone off into a wild utopian dream here. Tell me if you all think I'm wrong.
Love,
Anthony
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Yes, Deeej, I entirely concur.
Sometimes I wonder how I managed to reach a reasonably balanced view of life and sex and so on with such scanty basic information.
In my day there was no internet. Public libraries had 'private cases' for anything that went as far as to show a phallus. It was really quite hard to investigate the facts of life and the haphazard investigation I did left a lot of quite serious holes and maybe they aren't all filled in even now.
But I did have a huge advantage - no praying! I was never taken to church. No priest was assumed to be a suitable educator for me. Nobody tried to tell me that the way you decided whether something was 'good' or not was to ask a priest what God wanted.
As far as I can see I was let off a huge burden of guilt by that since it seems to me that religion does its best to load everyone with guilt.
Love,
Anthony
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ray2x
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Really getting into it |
Location: USA
Registered: April 2009
Messages: 430
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As an educator, sex education is, in my opinion, an embarrassment to teach. In the school district, the curriculum is a gigantic nothing of dated information and boring technical information. Throw in a slew of religious bigotry and anger, plus toss in parental roadblocks, political whatever, and media frenzy, and maybe a light dusting of intimidation, and I cannot begin to prepare for a well planned class. If I dared to be truthful in a sex education presentation, I would be either arrested or suspended from teaching. I have heard back some 20 years or so, a teacher (male) could take a fruit (banana or cucumber) and demonstrate applying a condom onto the fruit. Those days are long gone. I had some very good slide pictures of male/female sex and showed them to my class of developmentally disabled adults back a while, but those slides disappeared (and that today would get me in deep trouble today).
So, there must be some good teachers who can provide good information to students on the sly while mechanically providing sex education.
Raymundo
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Dear Raymundo,
I am very sorry indeed to hear that. Nowadays in the UK the embarrassment works (or can work) the other way round. Because parent groups are too embarrassed to demand details and rights of veto on the syllabus for sex education the good teachers can do a really good job. For example when the subject covers condoms there are enough so that if some are missing at the end no-one will notice and there are lots of opportunities for hands on experience of them.
And, to my delight, when the PSCHE teacher did a very truncated lesson as a demo to the governors there was not a single governor voice raised against it. I can't believe that would have been typical even ten or fifteen years ago.
And, on the whole the parents are happy to leave such decisions in the hands of the governors who, on the whole, are more enlightened than the parents.
Love,
Anthony
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ray2x
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Really getting into it |
Location: USA
Registered: April 2009
Messages: 430
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Thank you for your encouraging words. I was able to rewrite the adults with disabilities education curriculum guide for human development and sexuality. The old curriculum guide never mentioned gay needs and lacked specific information about STDs plus lots of other points. I researched the current sexual education guides and loaded the new guide with as much as I could. I sumitted the final draft this past April and was informed that the guide would be published on the district's website soon. It is only a guide for teaching but now it contains much more on gay identity and STDs and even transgender information (but don't think it's a definitive method for sex education). To say the least, this curriculum lacks depth and needs much more on gay matters. If I have the opportunity, I hope to be asked to update this curriculum and may really take it apart and reinvent the concept of sex education, at least for adults with disabilities.
Raymundo
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Extremely clever.
Hugs
N
I dream of boys with big bulges in their trousers,
Never of girls with big bulges in their blouses.
…and look forward to meeting you in Cóito.
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timmy
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Has no life at all |
Location: UK, in Devon
Registered: February 2003
Messages: 13800
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Nice that things were Kraftily Ebbing, but he does go ON rather. And what IS masturbation?
Author of Queer Me! Halfway Between Flying and Crying - the true story of life for a gay boy in the Swinging Sixties in a British all male Public School
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