Sex education in schools: it's just bananas

http://www.theguardian.com/lifeandstyle/womens-blog/2014/sep/25/sex-education-schools-bananas

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What do sticky tape, lily pads and bananas have in common? They have all been used to educate children about sex.

When people started discussing their personal experiences of school sex and relationships education (SRE) on Twitter this week as part of the #SREnow campaign, the responses were, well, eye-opening. One person described being taught the “sex life of a pea” and having to extrapolate from there. Another was instructed to write “I am Catholic” on her AS-level biology exam paper if a question about contraception came up. Together, the hundreds of tweets revealed a stark picture of the information young people receive about relationships.

Some were so bad they were funny:

#SREnow we had packing tape put on our arms and ripped off to simulate what sex was going to be like emotionally/physically

@EverydaySexism I was lucky. In school at age 13 they blindfolded us, had us spin around & then put a condom on a banana #SREnow

Some were worrying:

@EverydaySexism #SREnow My experience of sex ed in school? Absolutely none.

"Relationships," consent, and healthy sexuality were no part of any curriculum I heard of. #SREnow

@EverydaySexism We didn't get Sex ed and this was only a few years ago - I'm 18. They even cancelled guest speakers I.e. Choices #SREnow

Some were downright bizarre:

@EverydaySexism We watched a video of some people playing naked Volleyball. Nothing useful at all about consent or saying no. #SREnow

@EverydaySexism just 2yrs ago my daughter shown a dvd where a cartoon woman chases man with feather duster round the bed. #SREnow

We were shown a vid of a woman (egg?) sitting on a lily pad in swimming pool while men (sperm?) raced to get to her. @EverydaySexism #srenow

Many revealed a total lack of information about non-heterosexual relationships or different gender identities:

@EverydaySexism boys sent out whilst girls were told about periods. Nothing on consent, definitely nothing on LGBT relationships #SREnow

@EverydaySexism #SREnow our teachers just told us that EVERYONE does it. Being an asexual that was the reason I forced myself to do it.

#SRENow As a bisexual man, something explaining that my feelings were perfectly normal would have been useful, frankly

Others revealed the roots of damaging victim-blaming:

We were taught that girls need to be careful and close our legs or "we might be raped" #SREnow

#SREnow my catholic school taught consent by suggesting if your skirt is shorter than knee length, you've essentially said "yes".

Worst thing from sex ed? On dealing with #DV: "Be nice to boys and they won't have to hit you." Public HS. #SREnow @EverydaySexism

But funny, poignant or devastating, what the responses all revealed was how urgently we need to get our act together and sort out comprehensive, compulsory SRE in all schools.

Let me save those poised below the line some time here and say, straight from the off, that of course these experiences are anecdotal. We can’t verify how long ago the people tweeting left school, or whether their education took place in the UK. A few tweeters paid tribute to excellent SRE, and some schools are already stepping up. But while the snapshot suggested by these anecdotes is compelling, we don’t need to rely on them to gauge the scale of the problem. The facts speak for themselves.

When the UK Youth Parliament surveyed almost 22,000 young people about SRE, 40% said theirs was either poor or very poor, and 43% said they hadn’t received any at all. When Brook surveyed over 2,000 14-18-year-olds throughout the UK, nearly half said that SRE “doesn’t really cover what they need to know about sex”. An ICM poll for the End Violence Against Women Coalition (EVAW) found that 77% of young people feel they do not have enough information or support to deal with physical or sexual violence. And a recent Ofsted report found that schools were failing young people on SRE.

Sorry to quote so many statistics at you. But the truth is, I could go on and on. There are figures coming out of your ears to back up the importance of compulsory SRE, whichever angle you approach it from. With 85,000 women raped annually in England and Wales and 400,000 sexually assaulted, how can we fail to tackle vital issues such as consent and healthy relationships in the classroom? With the NSPCC warning that “thousands of teenage girls who are sexually assaulted by boys suffer in silence because they often accept the abuse as part of a relationship or don’t know how to stop it”, how can we fail to provide them with the information they need to recognise abuse and access help? When these things are happening in schools (where 300 rapes have been reported to police in the past three years and almost one in three girls experiences unwanted sexual touching) why aren’t we tackling them there? And with 60% of young people saying that they first see pornography aged 14 or younger, why aren’t we giving them the tools to offset and make sense of the confusing messages such material can often impart?

It’s great that some parents discuss these issues with their children, but we can’t guarantee they all will. 750,000 children already witness domestic violence each year, and many grow up in homes where they might get the message that violence in relationships is the norm. Some parents describe feeling unable to discuss these issues, or find it difficult to know where to start. Schools provide young people with guidance about plenty of other important life lessons, such as healthy eating, so why not give them similar support on the universal topic of human relationships? It’s too important to leave to chance.

The idea that children should be given guidance and information on these issues seems so sensible that many people are shocked to hear it isn’t already on the curriculum. But it’s currently not compulsory for schools to teach young people about sexual consent, healthy relationships, or issues such as online pornography or abuse.

As I talk to pupils at school after school, the impression of confusion and misinformation around sex is potent. At some schools, girls describe being held down in the playground and groped. At others, I am confidently told that it “can’t be rape if she’s your girlfriend”, or: “It’s not rape if she’s drunk, because she’s asking for it.”

After everything I’ve heard over the past three years, and the tens of thousands of testimonies I’ve read from people experiencing sexism, harassment and abuse, if I could change one single thing to make a difference, this is it. We owe our children good, compulsory sex and relationships education. We owe it to children already experiencing abuse and we owe it to those who might later become adult victims because the key messages weren’t ingrained from the very beginning.

If you agree, please sign the petition.

And just in case you’re still not convinced, I leave you with the poor person who tweeted:

@EverydaySexism My tutor was too embarrassed to even say 'sex'. He called it 'jiggery pokery'.

Frankly, I can’t help but agree with this tweeter’s response:

@Queenof_Hell @EverydaySexism I'd be more embarrassed to say jiggery pokery than 'sex' to be honest