SEX ED FOR CHILDREN HAS GONE WILD
Sex ed has gone crazy. “Put On Something Sexy” and straddle your Indian cowboy-style, kids.
The two flip books in the videos below arrived at a school in Canada for the sex ed class for grade seven and eight (12 and 13 year olds). A teacher at that school told me that the resources were to help the health teacher explain to students how to properly use a condom.
I admit to having had a knee-jerk reaction the first few times I watched the penises spring to life in the flip books. Was this porn for kids or sex ed? But after researching sex ed from around the world — and learning a few things myself, since the last time I took a sex-ed class was in the ’80s and there are some disgusting diseases like molluscum contagiosum (water warts) that are new to me — I’ve done a flip-flop on the books. The reinforcement of “put a condom on, put a condom on, put a condom on” in these two page-turners offers hours of fun while hammering home an important health message.
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Using a condom is a message that more American students should be receiving (in fact, they should all get condoms before entering high school) as the U.S. is failing sex ed compared to other developed nations around the world. How do we know the U.S. is failing? The teen pregnancy and birth rates are the proof. The lowest rates for teen births in the world (according to the United Nations Population Division) are in Switzerland, Germany, Italy, Japan and the Netherlands. These nations have the most open and informative sex-ed programs which start at early ages, something most sex educators state as being crucial. In 2012, in the U.S., of every 1,000 teenage girls between the ages of 15-19, 31 gave birth, where in Switzerland two per 1,000 girls gave birth, and in Germany and Italy four per 1,000.
The flip books arrived at a public school in Ontario, Canada, from the British Columbia Centre for Disease Control and the Chee Mamuk Aboriginal Program. According to Carol Swan at the Chee Mamuk Aboriginal Program, the books are meant for teens, but it is up to the individual sex educator. The teachers in Ontario kept the books for staff-room jollies and didn’t distribute them to the kids in fear of the angry parent mob.
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The teachers in the province of Ontario are facing a similar dilemma as many American educators. Ontario public schools are using an outdated sex-ed curriculum from the mid-1990s (a pre-sexting era) because in 2010 when a new-and-improved curriculum was unveiled, a minority of parents went ballistic over the thought of their little buttercups being taught the correct names for body parts.
Can you say penis and vagina? If you can’t say vulva, labia, scrotum, or testicles you should NOT be pulling your kids from sex-ed classes like the Jehovah’s Witnesses do, nor should you be blocking the right of knowledge, especially knowledge that affects health and well-being, from others. Teachers of 12 and 13 year olds in the U.S., Canada, and the U.K. expressed concern to me over the holes in students’ knowledge about reproduction. They feel kids should know it all by then.
In the U.S., 93 percent of parents want sex ed to be taught in schools (according to Harvard’s Kennedy School of Government), but in many states, the voices of a few itty-bitty-dirty-word committees and the abstinence zealots (abstinence-only programs are proven ineffective) keep thwarting improvement in sex education for the masses. (See failed bills and individual state policies on sex education in schools.)
A Canadian sex-ed teacher at a different school gave me an example of how withholding information (such as the correct names for body parts) from children can be dangerous.
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“A grade one student came to tell me that another boy had shown him his wink,” she shared. “I said ‘great’ and off he went looking puzzled. The boy came back and repeated the same info. Then I thought that the student was upset because he did not know how to wink. I showed him how to wink and had him practice a few times. Away he went again, all the while looking at me very strangely. Luckily, this boy was persistent and returned a third time. This time, with great emphasis, and accompanying hand gestures to his groin, he stated that the other boy had ‘shown him his wink.’ I finally understood that a ‘wink’ meant a penis and that the other boy was exposing himself on the playground — a situation that definitely needed to be addressed by the office. I had no idea of this slang term, and the exposure problem almost got missed. I tell this story to my classes, and we all laugh, but I think they understand the point and are able to use proper names. When I became a parent, I vowed never to use such slang terms for my child’s safety, as this incident has stayed with me over the years. I have found that students are generally more comfortable with using proper names for male parts rather than female parts. Why, I have no idea. Penis, scrotum, testicles are terms generally used with far less embarrassment than vagina, labia or ovaries. I did have a student who could handle hearing the male parts, but whenever he heard the word ‘vagina,’ he would cover his ears and hum.”
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Another Canadian teacher stressed the importance that boys and girls attend sex-ed classes together so they come to understand what their peers of the opposite sex are facing when it comes to growth and sexual development.
Tom Sherrington, the head of a boys’ grammar school in Chelmsford, England, had. Five 13-year-old boys fainted in one class. He usually expects one to drop. Anyone who thinks our youth doesn’t need sex education is out to lunch, on permanent recess. Year eight boys should not be fainting at the mention of periods.
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In talking to teachers in the U.K. and North America, it seems sexuality is often missed, and the lessons tend to be clinical. Where schools in Switzerland and the Netherlands hand out condoms before kids reach high school, schools here are handing out literature from the abstinence zealots which uses fear tactics and negativity such as the ETR brochure which states, “You’ll be surprised how much easier it is to make friends and form relationships when there’s no sex to get in the way.” But sex is also a healthy part of relationships, and through the teen years, we get to fumble and bumble and learn. It can be exciting, fantastic and awful. Kids need to be empowered with knowledge about their own sexuality. Making it all negative is more likely going to screw up their future relationships and attitudes about something which is one of the best parts of being human — having a great big fabulous orgasm with another person.
And for all the people who talk about girls “losing their virginity,” stop. Girls are horny, too. Lots of girls want sex and aren’t victims and aren’t losing anything. What they need is information, condoms and access to birth control.
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