MOTION #90: THIS HOUSE WOULD PROMOTE SAFE SEX THROUGH EDUCATION AT SCHOOLS
This discussion starts
from the point of view that sexual education classes should be given at
schools. But does this mean that so-called “safe sex” should also be promoted
within these lessons? Safe sex is the practice of sexual activity in a manner
that reduces the risk of infection with sexually transmitted diseases (STDs)
such as Chlamydia and HIV/AIDS, typically by use of condoms. Safe sex also
includes sexual practices that do not involve penetration.
Traditionally sexual
education lessons have focused on covering the biological facts about human
reproduction, and warnings against unsafe sexual practices. Often today sex
education is combined with relationships education, in an attempt to place sex
in a broader emotional, social and family context. But now every day more and
more people talk about “safe sex” and how teenagers should be more informed
about protection against STDs.
Despite the worries
some people have about whether sex should ever be seen as entirely risk-free,
every day this so-called "safe sex" is promoted more and more as a
solution for the epidemic of sexually transmitted diseases amongst teenagers.
But what if the promotion of "safe sex" has the opposite effect for
which it was introduced in Sexual Education classes? In 2011 the proportion of British 16-19 year
olds who had had unprotected sex rose to 26% and 45% did not consider
themselves to be well informed about contraception. Opponents argue that today
sexual education and promoting safe sex are mostly considered the same thing,
while it isn't and shouldn't be. They say it is one thing to inform teenagers
about sex and its risks, and quite another to promote and encourage them to use
"safe sex" as prevention.
Other issues include whether parents should have the ability to ‘opt-out’
of sex education for their children – or indeed whether the children themselves
should be able to opt-out; whether or not sex education should be done with a
particular focus (such as promotion of abstinence); and whether or not faith
schools should be compelled to teach elements of a sex-education syllabus (such
as on homosexual relationships) which run contrary to their beliefs.
Pros
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Cons
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Ignorance about sex is the primary cause of the spread
of sexually transmitted diseases (STDs). The spread of AIDS in the 80s and 90s showed that education and
information is more important than ever as exemplified by the slogan in the
British 1980’s advertising campaign to prevent AIDS ‘AIDS: Don’t Die of
Ignorance’. The campaigns were credited with credited with changing behaviour
through warnings on adverts and informing through an information leaflet.
This shows that education can work even when starting from scratch. Giving
sex education in schools is crucial to the spread of information to each
successive generation, and may be supplemented by frank discussion at home.
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While a serious
disease, AIDS transmission makes up only a tiny proportion of sexually
transmitted infections each year.
Firstly the harm of
these infections has always been satisfactorily low before public Sex
Education, and secondly even if mandatory public education did have a
substantive benefit it would not outweigh the infringement on the moral
freedom of the parents.
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Abstinence is an outdated view, based on religious teaching,
which may be a personal choice but is not to be expected as the norm for
everyone. Young people express their
sexuality as part of their development to adulthood. It is not having sex
that is a problem, but having unsafe sex or hurting people through sexual
choices. Refusing to promote safe sex would mean not moving with the times.
Just because schools do not promote safe sex does not mean that adolescents
will not experiment with sex. They will already be exposed to sexual imagery
and ideas of sex so it is necessary that they are taught properly how to
remain safe.
Schools may also want to talk about abstinence at the
same time; it is a way of keeping sexually safe. However schools have to
recognise that the majority of pupils are unlikely to stick to abstinence
regardless of how much the school promotes it. It is therefore necessary for
the school to also promote and educate about safe sex.
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To not promote abstinence is not a neutral position, it
is a position the implicitly encourages sexual promiscuity. Children are at
risk of severe psychological and physical harm from having sex too young, and
should be encouraged not to do so. Promoting ‘safe sex’ is implicitly
encouraging sex by implying that it is safe and a normal thing to be doing.
This will encourage young people to believe that there is no risk when this
is not the case even if they do follow the prescriptions they have been
taught about sex.
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The information age makes attempting to hide
information on sex impossible. The internet
provides a vast amount of easily accessible information about sex, of varying
degrees of quality. Most children in the west now have access to the internet
and are therefore likely to have access to this information on sex, or at
least educational materials on sex even if the child’s access to the internet
is controlled.
Given that it is impossible to prevent children from
accessing this information if they really want to, it makes sense to present
it to them in an organised and accurate fashion. Rather than allowing children
to find information on their own through what may well be unreliable
resources it is necessary that they should get good reliable information.
That this information when there is safe sex education comes from the school
means that the children know that they information is reliable. They can then
use this information to help them decide how reliable any further information
they may find from other sources is.
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The problem with mandatory sex education is precisely
that it presents that information in an organised fashion – by the
state. In doing so the right of the
parents to raise their children in accordance with their structure of beliefs
is usurped.
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Restricting information to children is inconsistent
with the age of consent. With the age of consent
being 16 and with young people being able to vote at 18, it does not make
sense for parents to have control over whether their children attended sex
education classes right up until the age of 19 or whenever they finish full
time schooling.
The age of consent means that there is clearly a need
to be taught about sex from that age of consent. This is something that
cannot be guaranteed to happen in all individual households if left to the
parents whereas it can be ensured in schools.
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True, but nor does it make sense to make the classes
mandatory once the child reaches an age where it is legally able to decide
whether it wants to partake of them. Nor does this mean that these classes
need to be promoting safe sex rather than simply teaching the facts and
encouraging abstinence.
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Our children are sexually active. They are making
decisions that can affect the rest of their lives. They should be able to
choose responsibly and be well-informed about the likely outcomes. They
should know about sources of free or cheap contraception, who to turn to when
pregnant or if they suspect they have a venereal disease, how to use
contraception to avoid both, and, contrary to the impression of
abolitionists, they should be told the benefits of abstinence. How can you tell people about that if you
refuse to discuss sex? How can you imagine they will take you seriously if
you turn a blind eye to something so many of their peers are doing?
They need an external source of support to resist peer
pressure, and have sex later rather than sooner: lamentably, it is presumed
amongst many young people that having unprotected sex with many partners at
an early age is the norm and they encourage others to do it (and attempt to
humiliate those that don’t). We need mechanisms to support those that want to
resist that pressure: sex education is such a mechanism. Sex education is
part of a package of provisions needed to help our teenagers avoid the
terrible pitfalls of unwanted pregnancy and venereal disease. This problem is
here – pretending that it isn’t won’t make it go away. How else do opponents
of sex education propose to deal with the huge problems of STDs and teen
pregnancy? Effective and widely supported sex education programs can achieve
real results. For example, in the Netherlands, amongst people having
intercourse for the first time, 85% used contraception – compared to 50% in
the UK.
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Sex education leads
to experimentation and early intercourse, and indirectly encourages
promiscuity. Sex education leads to
experimentation and early intercourse, and indirectly encourages promiscuity.
The most moral form of Sex Education says ‘you shouldn’t do this, but we know
you are,’ thus pushing children to consider their sexual existence before
they need to or indeed should. Thus sex education’s message is invariably
confused – on the one hand, by saying ‘here are the perils of teen sex – so
don’t do it,’ and on the other hand, ‘here is how to have teen sex safely.’
Less moral forms
start by saying, ‘the best form of a relationship is a loving, constant
relationship’ and then say, here are the ways to use protection if you’re not
in such a relationship’ – a logic which presumes children are in sexual
relationships to begin with. The justification for this is that ‘adolescents
know all about sex’ – an idea pushed in our permissive society so much it’s
almost a truism – but contrary to that bland generalisation, many children
don’t do these things early, don’t think about these things – they actually
have childhoods, and these lessons stir up confusion, misplaced embarrassment
or even shame at slower development. They also encourage children to view
their peers in a sexualised context.
The openness with which education tells students to
treat sex encourages them to ask one another the most personal questions
(have you lost your virginity? – how embarrassing, how uncool, to have to say
no), and to transgress personal boundaries – all with the teacher’s approval.
Inhibitions are broken down not just by peer pressure, but by the classroom.
As pro-sex education people love to point out, children develop in their own
time – but that means that some are learning about this too early, as well as
‘too late.’ We in society are guilty of breaking the innocence of childhood,
earlier and earlier – and these lessons are a weapon in the forefront of that
awful attack on decent life.
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That logic might sound impressive – but it’s the same
one that fails to control underage drinking, underage smoking, the watching
of rated movies by those forbidden to do so, the eating of bad food – and
underage sex. It’s the same poor parental logic that has seen a generation of
children grow up divorced from the society around them, children who die from
drugs overdoses and whose parents say (honestly), ‘I just had no idea.’ It’s
time to talk to our young people about what they do – honestly, frankly,
without frightening them into dishonesty and deception. To do otherwise
perpetuates the cycle of ignorance about youth society, and perpetuates the
status quo of being able to do nothing to change it.
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Children are bad decision makers. Sex education informs children about sex, and then
invites them to make a choice. But as demonstrated all the time, children are
bad decision-makers, often choosing what is bad for them. That is why adult
society often needs to decide for them – what they should eat, what they
should watch on T.V., when they are mature enough to be able to choose
whether or not to drink or smoke. Surely sex is just as important as those
things – just as dangerous, just as potentially destructive. The abdication
of our responsibility in the sexual arena is shameful; we should be unafraid
to simply tell children this is something they cannot do, aren’t mature
enough to consent to yet – a responsibility we seem to shrink from even
though it is reflected by the stated aim of society enshrined in the law of
the age of consent. Lessons implicitly lauding the pleasures of intercourse
are entirely contrary to that aim.
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Parents often know nothing (or worse, are armed with
dangerously naive delusions) of the sexual state of their children. The
picture painted by abolitionists is inaccurate – the process of deciding what
is taught in schools involves parents’ groups and school governing bodies on
a school-by-school basis, so parents do have a role in deciding what is
taught. But ultimately, the state should be involved in educating the whole
child, not just in doling out academic ideas – and should work hard to
safeguard sexual health of youngsters, a field near-impossible to separate
from sex education.
This is a subject just as important for the development
of young people as the conventional subjects such as maths and English. The
role of ‘teacher’ has to change with time. Once, teachers only instructed the
children of the well-off or acted as a branch of the church, now they teach
everyone in a secular society. As their role changes, they must remain
responsible and obey the law: thus, the scaremongering of suggesting teachers
will abuse their students or lure them into relationships is irrelevant, as
both sides believe that is wrong, and should be prosecuted.
Rules banning discussions of sex in schools can deny
teachers the ability to deal with real problems. When an individual student
comes to a teacher with a problem, a rule against discussing such things in
the classroom will probably mean that this outlet of help the troubled
adolescent has sought out, often because he feels the family isn’t the place
to get help, will be denied to him, will turn its back on him. Like it or
not, in today’s fractured society teachers have taken on the role of
counsellor, and this rule will indirectly curtail their ability to fulfil it.
The result of that will be appalling.
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Responsibility for
children's moral and sexual upbringing is not the responsibility of schools. This is none of the state’s business. Teaching this
subject en masse in a classroom reduces it to biological notions, group
embarrassment and crude jokes. Furthermore, children have never needed this
from the state: left alone, they learn from their family and surroundings and
grow naturally into adults without the state’s involvement. Few things are
responsible for parental disaffection with education more than the teaching of
sex and sexuality in ways contrary to their wishes.
Parents have a right to determine the moral environment
in which their children develop and this is a huge intrusion into that right.
That moral environment has been manipulated again and again over the last
forty years by a liberal teaching establishment set on undermining
traditional values and beliefs. Sex education has been a prime weapon in that
social engineering. That tool should be taken away from teachers, who as a
body have proven themselves undeserving of it. As for the tedious idea that
children somehow need the nanny state to look after their sexuality – who
knows children and their needs better than parents? Schools are responsible
for so much that is wrong with our children, and by giving them free licence
to delve into students’ sexuality, things become so much worse, blurring the
line between teacher, adviser, confidante, and sometimes in extremes, between
teacher and lover – an abuse of power that bringing sex into the classroom
makes so much easier.
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Well taught sex education does no such thing. Sex and
responsibility classes must tread a fine line, first stressing the importance
of waiting until ready before having sex, and pointing to the physical
benefits of fewer partners and starting sex later – but must then move on to
the reality of modern Britain’s sex-ridden teen culture, without applauding
it, and try to decrease the very high levels of STDs and pregnancy. Yes,
that’s hard to do – but that doesn’t mean we shouldn’t do it. On the contrary
– it’s one of the most important duties society faces today. Arguments about
poor teaching apply equally to maths. We often have to try to recruit
teachers in unpopular fields – true, difficult, but hardly unique. The answer
is to improve teacher training, both for new graduates and for practising
teachers, and to bring in outside consultants from the health and social
welfare sectors, who have deep experience in this area.
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Sex education for
underage children undermines the law. Sex education classes for those under the age of consent undermines the
law. It says, ‘don’t do this – but given that you are, do this, this and
this.’ This sends a terrible message about the law – that breaking it isn’t
serious, that authority (as represented by teachers) tacitly approves of that
illegality, will tolerate it and even encourage it.
Sex education fails to tell our children clearly what
is right and what is wrong. And remember that these are children, who need
clear boundaries to guide their behaviour, and who may not understand the
subtleties appreciated by liberal educationalists. In any case, so few
teachers want to teach this subject that the quality of teaching is awful.
Those that do end up teaching it are often the oddest characters in the
teaching establishment. Many teachers happy to ‘cover’ other subjects are
uniquely embarrassed by this one, or object to it on moral grounds and will
not do so, leaving it to the most liberal members of staff.
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