Sex education in a time warp

Sometimes I get up in the morning, read the news, and wonder which century I will be transported to. I also question the time traveller’s motives, but that’s only before I’ve had some coffee.

I experienced this curious sensation when I read about the actions and beliefs of Conservative MP Nadine Dorries, for example. She is quite an unsettling woman, having brought two suggestions to Parliament, both startling in their anachronistic absurdity.

Her first suggestion was to put forward legislation that would require counselling groups to be '"independent" of abortion providers, a thinly-veiled attempt to give Christian groups more influence over counselling provision for women facing such decisions.

On the face of it, not a bad plan. Unfortunately she supported it with false accusations of bias and inadequacy against existing counselling providers, such as the British Pregnancy Advisory Service, who by all accounts are not only doing an excellent job, but they are doing so according to government guidelines.

What’s most horrifying about this particular motion of Dorries is that, despite losing in Parliament by 368 votes to 118, Health Secretary Andrew Lansley is still trying to push through the “spirit of [the] amendments” by adjusting the government guidelines. 

Dorries’s other suggestion, which sent me reeling back into the middle ages, was that we should provide extra sex education classes for girls only, on “the benefits of abstinence.” So you’d like to single out girls for lessons on how to defend yourselves against those sex-crazy boys, Mrs Dorries? Not planning on teaching the boys that saying no is a positive thing, too? Or maybe just trying to force archaic, unsuccessful forms of sex education upon our children?

There is little evidence to suggest that abstinence education is successful. A report by the AIDS Research Institute at the University of California, one of the world's leading AIDS research faculties concludes that “little if any credible research exists to substantiate the claims that abstinence-only programming leads to positive behaviour change among youth.” 

Speaking of the US, a country that actively encourages abstinence-only education: it has the highest rate of teen pregnancy in the world, by an enormous margin: around 60 per 1000 births, according to the most recent reports made available by the Guttmacher Institute, a sexual health research centre.

Dorries's suggestions have since resulted in protests, petitions and satire, which is exactly what to expect when you go around insisting that “Teaching a child at the age of seven to apply a condom on a banana is almost saying: 'Now go and try this for yourself'.” Not only has she entirely misrepresented the way sex education is taught in primary schools, but she also doesn’t seem to quite understand teenagers’ attitudes towards sex: last time I checked, they needed no encouraging.

The Dutch have the right idea: they give their children comprehensive sex education from an early age from as early as five years old, teaching them about the biological and psychological implications of sex, pregnancy, and relationships. They teach teens that saying no is absolutely fine, in balance with telling them everything they need to know when they do have sex. As a result they have one of the lowest teen pregnancy rates in the world, at 15 births per 1000. Maybe they’re getting help from more benevolent time travellers than we are.

You know who else had the right idea? Monty Python. One sketch showing bored children watching a sex education class, where the teacher has sexual intercourse in front of them, brings into sharp relief the real issue. It isn’t the education that’s the problem, but the social attitude.

As long as a natural, biologically necessary subject is still taboo, we haven’t a hope of teaching our kids how to enjoy themselves as well-informed, responsible individuals.