Today we have talked about sexual education at schools and within the family.
It is a fact that children receive a lot of the sexual information from internet but most of the times it is pornographic and biaised and what is worse, there is a great danger of finding sexual predators.
In Great Britain, the government has been trying to put into place some kind of compulsory sexual education but so far there are only some recommendations for the primary and secondary school which are only timid approaches to the real needs of our children.
For instance, more contraception information is crucial to avoid unwanted pregnancies. And we can't forget the importance of consent in a sexual relationship; a clear case of no valid consent is if the girl is drunk; another one is not to mix up a woman dressing in a "provocative" manner and giving consent.
So, the first problem we encounter is that some parents are against sexual education because of their religion or their traditional way of thinking. Catholic or Muslim families, old generations and rich tend to be more conservative and traditionalist. At school they can ask for their children of being "excused" from attending these sexual lessons.
The second one is related to what to teach. In Spain, for instance, the anatomy and fonction of the sexual organs and reproduction are studied in the subject of biology but there is no specification about sexual health and contraception. However, sexual education is more than that with more embarring topics such as sexual pleasure, free consent in sexual encounters, musturbation, how to use a condom, heterosexuality versus homosexuality or abortion.
In Spain, from time to time an expert is invited to give a session about practical sexual issues in the secondary school.
The third issue is if we would be embarrassed if we had to give sexual education to our students, if we would be well prepared to do so and if we would be unbiaised enough and not let our beliefs to interfere with this task.
In the Scandinavian countries, sometimes a prostitute is engaged to give this kind of courses since these people are in fact "experts of sex". How would Spanish people react if we did the same thing in Spain?
As you can see, sexual education is a complex topic and I firmly believe that we need more information and strategies of how to tackle this topic in class.
