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Tuesday, 29 November 2011

Sex education reported by the semi-educated

As you will know if you've read LLM Calling in the past, I'm not a huge fan of the Daily Mail and yet I often get to read it because my in-laws read it.  Usually I can laugh it off, but today's article, which isn't even new news, just has to be responded to.

Here's the article in question with the headline "Casual sex and 'bad touching': Guess what your eight-year-old is learning at school these days".

It's enough to scare any parent, let alone their parents.  But from my hour of research it seems clear that it's far from true.  The Channel 4 Learning webpage provides the following notes on the programme content
Unit 1 - Age 5-7
1.Differences     2.How Did I Get Here?     3.Growing Up

Unit 2 - Age 7-9
1.Changes    2.How Babies Are Made     3.How Babies Are Born

Unit 3 - Age 9-11
1.Girl Talk     2.Boy Talk      3.Let's Talk About Sex

This is pretty straightforward, under nine years old are taught about life, boys and girls, changes as you grow and about babies in a physiological way.  The talk about sex isn't until year 6 and secondary school.  And let's be clear, especially as we approach World Aids Day, our kids need to understand about sex and sexual health and protecting themselves in their choices.  I was at primary school when the AIDS campaign "Don't die of ignorance" landed on our doorstep and it did me no harm to learn then. 

Searching some more I found this article from The Examiner, responding to a Daily Mail article in MARCH 2010.  This is old news!!  This response article entitled "In defense of 'All About Us: Living and Growing' DVD at the center of sex education 'outrage' in UK" is written by someone who has actually watched the programmes and comments on the facts they have witnessed.

I don't know what to be more angry about?
the poor reporting
the biased statements
the lack of facts
the creation of panic
the lazy work ethic of the journalists

Daily Mail, pull your socks up, this is truly dreadful.

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