Sex pamphlet for 6-year-olds horrifies family lobby

The Times September 18, 2008

The country’s biggest sexual health charity has published a sex education pamphlet for six-year-olds to encourage earlier discussion of the facts of life.

The 12-page comic-style booklet, which will be distributed to schools, asks children to identify the physical differences between boys and girls and name their body parts properly.

One puzzle asks children to draw a line from the words “vagina” and “testicles” to the correct areas of a picture of a naked girl and boy.

The pamphlet from the FPA — formerly the Family Planning Association — entitled Let’s Grow with Nisha and Joe, which will be shown to pupils by schools unless parents opt out, was immediately condemned by family campaigners as “a very worrying development”. They said that years of sex education had done nothing to tackle the teenage pregnancy rate, still the highest in Europe, and starting the education even earlier would make the problem worse.

The FPA countered that 6 was not too young to start conversations about sex. On the contrary it was a good chance to get the conversation going because children were not self-conscious or embarrassed about their bodies at that age.

“The booklet answers the questions that six-year-olds are already asking about themselves, their families and the world around them,” said Julie Bentley, chief executive of the FPA.

“Introducing ideas about love, relationships and body names at a very basic level, when children are inquisitive and want to learn, lays a foundation for learning when they’re much older and ready to find out more.”

The FPA hopes primary schools that have shied away from lessons on sex and relationships will use the pamphlet as a basis for lessons. It also hopes that it will encourage parents to talk to children about what will happen to their bodies when they grow up.

But critics say that sex education has not worked and that a new approach that focuses on values rather than biology is required.

“Where has the last 20 years of propagating value-free sex education got us? The FPA seem to think that by doing the same thing with younger and younger children they are going to get a different result. Actually they are going to reap the whirlwind,” said Trevor Stammers, a GP and trustee of the Family Education Trust.

“There is a constant emphasis on biological knowledge and an absence of understanding that feelings can be hurt and sex outside a loving relationship leads to damage and retreat.”

The publication comes as ministers review the way that sex education lessons are provided in schools. Under the present rules the only statutory requirement made of primary and secondary schools is that they teach children the basic facts about human reproduction in their biology lessons.Many schools do much more during personal, social and health education (PSHE) lessons, but standards vary widely and teachers often lack training and materials. Parents are allowed to withdraw their children from these lessons although all must attend the science classes that deal with sex.

Ministers will explore whether sex lessons as part of PSHE should be statutory, and start earlier. They are also looking at whether parents should retain the right to withdraw their children from these lessons.

The debate is highly polarised. The FPA and other sex education campaigners say that good sex education, similar to that taught in the Netherlands and Scandinavia, is the only way to tackle the increase in sexually transmitted diseases and reduce the teenage pregnancy rate.

Family campaigners say that the present approach to sex education has achieved nothing. “We are deeply concerned with what is going to come out of this review, with fewer and fewer rights for parents,” Dr Stammers said. “The doctrine of ‘if it feels right for you, do it’ has been disastrous, simply leading to younger and younger teenagers having sex, with the risk that it damages their ability to develop relationships later in life.”

Case study: ‘The pictures make it work’

Gayle Sawyer, 41, says the questions are coming thick and fast from her daughter, Josie, about the body.

Mrs Sawyer said: “Now that she’s 6 there are more and more questions. This booklet is really useful in helping to explain the differences between boys and girls, which is what most of the questions are about. The good thing about it is that it is interactive and attractive to look at, there are pictures to colour in and puzzles to do. If it had just been words on a page it would not have been so helpful.

“To be honest I thought it was a bit simplistic for six to seven-year-olds. But it was the first time we called things by their proper name. She got a bit stuck on drawing lines between the words and the bodies.”

Mrs Sawyer, a public relations consultant who lives in South London, said that some parents may balk at using words such as “vagina” and “testicles” with their six-year-olds. “But I think it’s good that they know the biological names. Some people might think it is too advanced for six-year-olds, but not everyone uses the same [identifying] slang words.”