The sex ed debate

Elizabeth Binning in the Herald reports:

Schools are being accused of going too far in what they teach children about sex.

Children as young as 12 are being taught about oral sex and told it’s acceptable to play with a girl’s private parts as long as “she’s okay with it”.

In other cases, 14-year-old girls are being taught how to put condoms on plastic penises, and one female teacher imitated the noises she made during orgasm to her class of 15-year-olds.

Well hopefully it was just an imitation.

One concerned father, who did not want to be identified, phoned Newstalk ZB to say he had taken his 12-year-old son out of a sex education class at his all-boy school after he came home upset about what had happened during one of the lessons.

It included a question-and-answer session that focused on, “I have learned that my girlfriend has a thing called a clitoris. I really want to play with it. Is that okay?” The answer was: “Yes, if you ask her and she’s okay with it.”

Goodness. The most we did as 12 year olds was play spin the bottle.

I wonder if the teachers giving the sex advice, also tell 12 year old girls that their boyfriends have penises and that if they want to play with them, it’s okay so long as you ask them first?

Mind you, I learnt the hard was some time ago never to under-estimate how much kids know. When I was a youth group leader (in my 20s) two ten year olds were talking openly about how one of them was going to get his girlfriend to give him a blowjob that weekend. I told them off of course for the inappropriate conversation but made the mistake of saying he shouldn’t use a term he doesn’t fully understand just to shock people. Before I could finish, the 10 year old had rushed out a very good technical description of oral sex and all the female leaders laughing at me as blushing I explained that yes I knew what it was also. Since then I have never assumed that kids don’t know what they are talking about when it comes to matters sexual.

On the main topic, I would hope that any sex education would discourage kids from touching each other’s clitorises and penises until they are 16, even if they do ask for permission. Sure many won’t wait, but it would be useful to point out to them that they may be breaking the law if they do not wait until 16.