www.christian.org.uk/news/teach-5-year-olds-about-sex-say-nhs-advisers/
Do you think that Sex and Relationships Education (SRE) should be taught to 5 year olds?
I say "NO" let them have a childhood and teach them Reading, Writing etc in the first instance. Sure if questions are asked let's give honest answers, just my opinion!
I can't help think that's a provocative headline designed to suggest things rather different from any real proposals - the same way as the Daily Mail would have us believe that every asylum seeker is living in a mansion, or that recognising same-sex couples would mean it was compulsory to be in one once Civil Partnerships became law.
ReplyDeleteI suspect anything in the press about "teaching five year olds", because of how education is banded since the introduction of key stage and standardised tests stuff. It really means "teaching five, six, and seven year olds". You can get a far more provocative headline out of the deliberate logic of "this is for the key stage 1 group, that includes five year olds, therefore it means five year olds". Even though that's like the Monty Python logician who says "All of Alma Cogan is dead, therefore all dead people are Alma Cogan".
Would I want sex and relationship education for seven year olds that consisted of a lesson where someone taught them the "how to" of sex? No. Actually, I wouldn't want that for fifteen and sixteen year olds either, if that was all you were doing. That's what we had when I was at school, and it was no use for real life complexities of attraction, dating, handling unwanted attention and so on.
Probably that's why now it has that "relationship" word in there. Sounds like a great step forward to me, that.
But -- would I want these 7 year olds taught relationship concepts - so they understand the ideas of children, parent, aunt, uncle, niece - yes. We used to do that and we thought of it as part of the regular lessons, because there wasn't a central curriculum that told us that learning those words was "SRE".
Would I want them to understand that while they might have just one dad and no mum, there are other children with one of each, or with two of one and one of the other, and all of this is normal and okay and not a reason to hit them at break for being different? Yes.
Would I want school to reinforce that if your parents break up and one of them leaves your family home, it's about things between those two people and not your fault for being a bad and wrong child? Hell yes.
And that means, in the lingo, giving them sex and relationship education.
do think 5 is too young, but if it annoys the christians great, do it. note they dont bother to hide their homophobia with the last paragraph in their article.
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