By James Moylan
‘The Australian Research Centre in Sex, Health and Society’, at La Trobe University, have created a sex education package for years 7 to 10 called The Practical Guide to Love, Sex and Relationships. It consists of packages of age appropriate class materials as well as the complimentary online resources.
Some of the topics explored include:
- The truth about desire (Yrs 9-10)
- What’s OK and what’s not OK (sexual harassment) (Yrs7-8)
- How to get to know someone (Yrs 7-8)
- Porn, what you should know (Yrs 8 up)
- Rollercoaster – love, sex & relationships (Yrs 9-10)
Students who do additional online research are provided with guidance on how to access more information in safe ways. In other words ways in which they will be shielded from overtly pornographic content as well being sure that their own privacy will be ensured.
The focus of the course material is on providing basic information about sex within an ethical frame that is entirely non-controversial as it does not purport to engage in an examination of the basis of our ethical frame of reference as a society, nor does it mention any belief system at all. By focusing on the pragmatic nuts-and-bolts of the sex act, and the social interactions which are commonly associated with it, the education package manages to simply assert basic and commonly-founded moral truisms without considering the bigger philosophical and religious questions at all. Which is entirely appropriate.
In the coursework that I have looked through it is simply assumed that ‘it is bad to treat other people badly’, that ‘violence and overt hostility is wrong’, and also that ‘we are all created equal and have equal rights regardless of our race, ethnicity, sexual orientation, and/or sexual predilections’. These moral maxims are incorporated as a bedrock rationale underpinning the provision simple and entirely pedestrian ethical instructions regarding how one might learn about and explore your own sexual personality without damaging yourself or other people in the process.
However in today’s Australian, the columnist Natasha Bita proposes that she is seriously outraged that the researchers who designed this sex-ed course would dare to include materials that ask the kids about sexual matters.
In a sex ed class? Asking about sex? How horrifying.
In an article entitled ‘Students asked about sex, masturbation’ this supposedly disinterested journalist exposes the disturbing fact that ‘the teaching guide contains a quiz for Year 7 students [that] includes the question: ‘Will masturbation make your palms go hairy?’’ Also that ‘Students as young as 12 are tested on whether they know what proportion of teenagers ‘have not had vaginal sex’ before the age of 16.’ It also dares to ask, and then answer, questions like ‘How does a person know if they are gay?’ How incredibly non-controversial!
The article focuses on one lesson in which children are instructed on how to use the internet safely and is jam-packed with such dangerous concepts advice as: ‘It’s a good idea to start at the highest level of filtering and only switch if you can’t find what you’re looking for,’ as well as suggestions on how you might cover your traces so as to leave no easily accessible record of your investigations online. How incredibly not radical at all!
Yet while not a single element mentioned in the article, or presented in any of the class materials (that I looked at for some hours) made me feel anything but admiration for the work that had gone into preparing such a well thought out package of instructional materials: the tone of the article in the Australian and the responses in the threads below it were both utterly astonishing.
‘Christine’ was of the opinion that the: ‘Only one way to describe this – SICK! And to think, the government is using our tax money for spreading this garbage and foisting it on our children. This is what happens when a society is in decline, it elects perverts and puts them in charge of spreading the malaise.’
‘Rohan’ was equally outraged, commenting: ‘Who gave these activists the mandate to destroy our cultural norms and reconstruct it in them in their image … The outcome of plebiscite on this dangerous social agenda in our schools would be a no brainer. So why do politicians allow it to continue?’
‘Iain T’ was anxious to express his admiration for the newspaper: ‘Thank goodness for the Oz reporters who are letting us know what is going on!’ he gushed. ‘These things are well kept secrets it seems. Who is pushing this stuff??’
One respondent declared that it was a Marxist plot to subvert our children, another that it was simply due to all of our teachers now obeying the orders of the shadowy United Nations Agenda 21 group and that it is patently obvious that all our teachers are actually engaged in brainwashing our children instead of educating them. There were also hundreds of other similar deranged and misguided comments. It made me positively ashamed to be an Aussie.
Apparently The Australian is now proposing that sex education is controversial. Sex education! Having been so successful in labeling the only LGBTI anti-bullying course in our schools as being ‘perverse’ and then having it gutted, the right wing warriors in our midst have now decided to come after sex education. It appears that the readers of The Australian think it is weird and wrong to discuss matters like masturbation or sexual orientation in a classroom? They propose that it is ‘perverse’ to do so? Have any of these same people even glanced at a television set anytime in the last ten years? I re-read the article three times just to be sure that I hadn’t missed anything.
No: the education package does not teach children how to build bombs. No: the education package does not preach hatred or bigotry. In fact, it does exactly the reverse. No: there are no disreputable political references included, or injunctions to take up arms against the state. In fact in the sex-education package is only a lot of information about sex, and information about how to get more information about sex. Nothing else.
It is obvious that the views of The Australian, and those of the majority of its readers, simply do not reflect what the vast majority of other Aussies think or feel about sex-education. Most Aussies are more than happy to discuss all sorts of things to do with sex. It is not the average Aussie who has problems with sex, it’s just a tiny group of evangelical and puritan religious folk amongst us. Plus a few old and largely decrepit right-wing warriors. In other words a group of people who don’t have sex or even like sex. Now, apparently, they don’t want any of the rest of us to have any sex either. Not even in the missionary position. Or talk about it.
The majority know that children will experiment with sex regardless of how much they have been taught about it. The majority also know that restricting information regarding sex will actually damage a small segment of our population in extremely significant ways. So the majority think that sex education is a terrific idea.
I just hope that the majority will also be willing to fight the minority anti-sex brigade this time on behalf of sex education remaining robust and free of religious nonsense. This is because unlike the anti-bullying parts of the curricula, sex education is a central and significant element of the modern educational landscape. If we allow the religious and political zealots amongst us to eliminate sex education then you can be sure that this will not be their final demand. It will be just the beginning. After all, until we run our whole society in a manner that accords with their perverse and distorted version of reality, then their demands will just keep on coming.
First anti-bullying. Then sex-education. Then physics, geography, history etc.
So NO! Sex education is here to stay. It serves an important purpose. Which is a whole lot more than you can say for the religious right wing in our country. They seem to do nothing but bully and intimidate the most vulnerable and helpless elements of our society just because they firmly believe that they have the right to tell all the rest of us on what we are allowed to do with our own genitals.
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Also by James Moylan:
From adolescent hope to mild despair in just forty short years
200 million reasons you should not vote for Malcolm Turnbull
‘Did we know we were lying about the drugs? Of course we did’
Why we need to be intolerant of climate science fools
Yes, we do need to talk about the spurious nonsense being taught to children in our schools
Election 2016: Media Groundhog Day
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