Garth George: Sex education out of touch with values

Columnist Garth George.

So the Ministry of Education is again tinkering with sex education in schools, and weeks before the curriculum is announced school principals say it will be inadequate because it doesn't take account of the appalling effects that internet pornography, social media and television are having on children's attitude to sex.

Otumoetai College principal Dave Randell sums it when he points out that sex education is a difficult balance between the needs of students and what their parents are comfortable with them being taught.

As a parent to three grown children and grandparent to 14 grandchildren, he says parents need to play a greater role and build a model of trust with their children.
Unfortunately, I can't see that happening in this day and age.

If it did, sex education would soon be back where it belongs - in the family and unnecessary in schools.

Research shows, Mr Randell says, that 50 per cent of young people experience sex while still at school, and teen attitudes to sex are being formed by explicit material they are being exposed to on social media and music channels.

But one of the basic problems as I see it is that many of the teachers who today "teach" sex education were themselves taught about it in school and consequently pass on some pretty grotesque information.

Remember the female schoolteacher standing before a class of 15-year-old girls and simulating for their edification the noises she makes while in the throes of sexual orgasm?

And 14-year-old schoolgirls being taught how to roll what one of them called "yucky and sticky" condoms on to plastic penises? And children as young as 12 being taught in class about oral sex and boys being told it's acceptable to play with a girl's private parts so long as "she's okay with it"?

And a class of 12-year-old boys discussing with their teacher the things they could do besides having intercourse, and the teacher suggesting oral sex since it "wasn't sex" and "won't inevitably lead to sexual intercourse", then adding that anal sex was another option?

All those things have been reported to have happened in our schools over the years, and on top of that hardly a week goes by that we don't read of schoolteachers, both male and female, being prosecuted or deregistered for inappropriate sexual relations with students.
The tragedy is that the whole sex education thing is predicated on the spurious proposition that sex between consenting children is on about the same level as having a meal together or going to the movies.

And that is a dreadful, dangerous, damaging lie.

The horrific result is that thousands of our children are today finding themselves abused, impregnated or poxed because they've been taught how to do it.

And far from encouraging them to delay sexual relations, it encourages them to experiment. In children that is only natural.

There seems to be no emphasis put on abstinence, yet there is plenty of evidence that children given lessons in safe sex are more likely to have intercourse younger, and that children taught abstinence are more likely to delay having sex than those given lessons about contraception.

But what really gets me about this whole sordid business is that our sex education is devaluing what can be one of life's most glorious experiences.

It takes no account of the emotional and spiritual dimensions of the sex act, which is one of God's greatest gifts to mankind, the means by which two - a man and a woman - can achieve ultimate intimacy.

Rather, much of this so-called sex education is in fact child abuse. It is not just misguided, not just ill-thought-out, not just dangerous, it is utterly evil.
And, until the spiritual dimension of sexuality is recognised, tinkering with it isn't going to help.

garth.george@hotmail.com