'We haven't been taught about sex': Teens talk about how to fix school sex education:
Last week, the Albanese government announced an expert panel to support relationships and sexuality education in Australian schools.
The group is lead by the head of anti-violence organization Our Watch, Patty Kinnersly, and includes consent advocate Chanel Contos. It will do a "rapid review" into consent and respectful relationships programs to identify "opportunities for improvement."
This follows a new focus on consent and healthy relationships in Australian schools. The former Coalition government made consent a mandatory part of the curriculum.
We are talking to teenagers about the sex education they receive at schools. This research highlights several areas young people think can be improved. They are particularly concerned sex education most often does not discuss actual sex.
As part of broader, ongoing research into online sexual content, we interviewed 30 West Australian teens (aged 11-17), between 2021 and 2023, to explore their experiences of sex education and where they source information to answer their questions about sex and relationships.
Eighteen interviewees were followed up with 12 months after we had first spoken, to see if their perspectives had changed.
Interviews began as some schools started teaching consent in 2021, with sexual assault being widely debated in the wake of the women's March4Justice rallies around the country and a school sexual assault petition spearheaded by Contos. We have continued to gather young people's perspectives as consent education became mandatory at the start of this school year.
The majority of the young people interviewed told us they were only taught the basics about consent—along the lines of "no means no, and yes means yes." As interviewee Miles* (17) told us:
"It's always broadly talked about [...] but it's never actually talked about what it means and what it actually is."
Nicola (16) added:
"It was more just like if someone says 'no," 'stop' or things like that and if you don't like it say 'no' and things instead of the depths of it."
Consent is complex, so teaching it without necessary detail or context can have devastating results. Some young people may feel unable to say "no" safely in unwanted sexual experiences, and others are genuinely unaware a sexual act occurring, may not be consensual.
At the same time, teens also felt like the focus was on consent at the expense of other information and topics. As Tiffany (14) said,
"The whole thing is consent, 'cos that's such a big thing nowadays [...] we haven't been taught about sex."
Interviewees also felt current sex education was overwhelmingly fear-based and focused on safety. As 15-year-old Lauren explained, she and her classmates had been taught "what could go wrong and not anything else."
"They talk more about sexual violence and sexual assault than they do about sex itself and the benefits of sex and pleasure [...]. It makes it feel like it's bad to have sex and that there's no pleasure in it and it's harmful."
The focus was on risk and biological aspects also left many students confused in terms of how to navigate real-life sexual scenarios safely. As Caris (15) explained:
"It's hard not knowing what to do and where to put yourself and how to move and all of that. It's hard for teenagers and they don't feel comfortable going to their parents."
Warren (17) said this meant teenagers were going online to find more information.
"The lack of education causes the younger generation to resort to online personal education therefore resulting in more negative or destructive sexual encounters."
This echoes a 2021–22 national survey, which found 95% of young Australians thought sex education was an important part of the curriculum. But only 24.8% said their most recent class was "very" or "extremely" relevant to them.
Young people interviewed also felt like their educators did not have enough training to be teaching about relationships and sexuality, which is taught as part of health and physical education from the first year of school to Year 10. As Nicola said,
"It's strange they have sport teachers teaching it, it's not a designated teacher for that program. I think it makes a lot more sense if it's someone who actually is knowledgeable."
[...] There's a common misconception that discussing sex encourages young people to have sex earlier. However, research suggests the opposite and information can actually delay sexual activity. Recent research also shows Australian parents want schools to tackle sex and relationships in more detail and from an early age.
Ultimately, schools need to be able to listen to the concerns of teens to meet their real needs around sex education in ways that are healthy, safe and relevant.
(Score: 2) by bzipitidoo on Sunday May 28 2023, @09:07AM (3 children)
Maybe Australia is less uptight than the US about sex. In the US, the social conservatives have entirely too much power to wreck or just shut down such classes altogether.
When I was a teen, information on that subject was pretty tightly locked down. Computer graphics were crude and there was no Internet with all those NSFW pr0n websites. Today of course we have thousands of explicit videos online. In those days, there were adult video stores that sold pr0n on VHS tapes. Never went anywhere near them. Bookstore newsstands had an adult section which was plastered with signs saying you had to be at least 18 years old to buy those. When I had a few moments away from my parents, I grabbed a Playboy and attempted to buy it with cash, though I knew very well I was and looked much too young. I wasn't sure what would happen. Would I be arrested? The clerk looked hard at me, but didn't ask for ID or say anything else, just went through with the sale. Whew. I had planned ahead for that moment, and slid the magazine into a folder in my backpack where no one would see it. Waited until everyone else had gone to bed, then got it out and educated myself. Then I learned that Playboy was too coy and tame to be of much educational value.
I think now that there is so much info online that the only problem is filtering out the bad info. Hardly need a sex ed class.
(Score: 5, Insightful) by hendrikboom on Sunday May 28 2023, @12:46PM (2 children)
You need the sex ed class so you can filter out the bad stuff.
(Score: 4, Insightful) by bzipitidoo on Sunday May 28 2023, @03:30PM (1 child)
All that's needed is some respected and trustworthy organization to put together and maintain a website with good info, and get the word out that such a website exists.
Of course, "respected and trustworthy" is the rub. Never occurred to me to check what church websites have to say about sex, but it's not hard to guess that what they say is messed up. Don't use contraceptives, don't masturbate, don't view pr0n, abstinence is the only acceptable way to avoid a pregnancy, don't even think of abortion, etc. I sure wouldn't trust churches to tell it straight, without injecting their agendas.
(Score: 2) by hendrikboom on Monday May 29 2023, @12:42AM
See, for example, Sexuality Education Resources [uua.org] and Why Is Sexuality Education a Unitarian Universalist Issue? [uua.org]
(Score: 4, Insightful) by looorg on Sunday May 28 2023, @09:52AM (6 children)
It appears this has not really changed over the decades, or geography. They can't even really be sure what it is that they want to teach -- relationships, feelings or is it going to be very biological and mechanical in nature as in what goes where and such.
Can they even teach it? Parts of it is more life lessons you pick up from just living and experiencing it. Porn in that regard is probably not a very good teacher unless you are so lost that you don't even know what naked people look like, but for it to be some kind of manual on what or how to do it then not so much.
I seem to recall it was our biology teacher. It was a weird lesson all things concerned. I don't think anyone actually learned anything. The teacher wasn't exactly thrilled about it either. It was very biological in nature.
(Score: 1) by namefags_are_jerks on Sunday May 28 2023, @10:24AM
It was the Science teacher including it with the Biology stream here too. For what I member, it was all "Mammal Reproduction 101". I didn't do Biology in Y11-12, but I gather they had a "Invertebrate Reproduction 201" as well.
Sounds like a Cultural Influence groups trying to find a new source of influence (and income), at the expense of Science education.
(Score: 3, Interesting) by Opportunist on Sunday May 28 2023, @12:31PM (1 child)
Still better than what some people got here, sex ed from a clergyman. It's like learning writing from an analphabet.
(Score: 2) by deimtee on Sunday May 28 2023, @11:44PM
what is a phabet?
If you cough while drinking cheap red wine it really cleans out your sinuses.
(Score: 2) by VLM on Sunday May 28 2023, @03:12PM (1 child)
This isn't solely a sex ed problem LOL, this is the shared experience across all subjects of public education.
Something the astroturf in general is never willing to consider, is the base assumption that teaching sex ed will result in better sexually educated students. So lets use a model that uses fetishization of math and literature to produce innumerate and illiterate students but this time we'll used those teaching techniques to produce sexually educated students. Hmm is this going to have the positive result that's being marketed or more likely ...
The other side dish of the situation is they don't wanna say they want to groom kids, but lets face it, theres a pretty strong aspect of groomers seeing it as their civil right to have access to groom kids.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday May 28 2023, @03:26PM
You seem to think schools cannot teach at all without some amoral agenda. Bad time at school?
(Score: 2) by bzipitidoo on Sunday May 28 2023, @04:17PM
Yeah, both porn and "biological and mechanical" really miss the boat. Perhaps the most important part of all this is picking a good partner. And, it should go without saying, making sure people have that choice.
There's a lot that goes into picking a good partner. As the saying goes, "marry in haste, repent at leisure." One of the main purposes of sex education is to satisfy the nigh unbearable curiosity teens have about it, so they don't make a bad, hasty choice just to learn what they couldn't learn any other way had there been no sex ed and they're stuck with parents who refuse to tell them anything. Judging is tough and fraught. How does anyone really know who's good and who's not so good? It is extremely tempting to just give up, and go for the simplest, brain-dead criteria: superficial looks. But people can train to do better. Another huge part of the game is self-improvement, to learn to be a better pick. Another aspect is learning what is reasonable to expect from your partner. Unreasonable, unfair, and extreme expectations can quickly kill a marriage.
(Score: 5, Informative) by Thexalon on Sunday May 28 2023, @10:58AM (2 children)
Based on their age, on average they probably are hoping for more of a practicum on the subject. I know I would have.
But in all seriousness, if you want to look at what comprehensive sex ed would look like, you'd check out what happens in the Netherlands. Kids learn the scientific names of body parts very early on along with concepts of boundaries of appropriate and inappropriate behavior, with the goal of making sure they know if someone is abusing them and can report it intelligently. As they get older, they get more information about how everything works. The result is that their pregnancy rate is extremely low.
Meanwhile, in the US there's a lot of "abstinence-only" religiously-based nonsense, which not only is unscientific but also doesn't work.
The only thing that stops a bad guy with a compiler is a good guy with a compiler.
(Score: 2) by VLM on Sunday May 28 2023, @03:18PM (1 child)
The curriculum is strictly centrally state controlled in my state with remarkably little local input and my state both when I was in school and my kids were in school sounds a lot like the Netherlands curriculum you list. Sure local districts can "do what they want" as long as they're willing to give up state money and licensure; LOL that ain't happening. Like how technically every state can set their own statewide drinking age to any age they want, its just the state doesn't get any federal tax money unless its 21, so essentially the feds set the drinking age; likewise the state sets the sex ed curriculum in my state. Doxes me, I donno, doesn't matter really. Probably all states are somewhat different plus or minus federal K12 funding requirements.
Oddly enough the only determinant of teen pregnancy rate in my state is race. Income has some effect but not much.
I think its low because Netherlander's gonna be Nerlanderians.
(Score: 2) by Thexalon on Monday May 29 2023, @02:41PM
Where I grew up, it was religiosity: The more overtly Christian they were, the more likely they were to wind up pregnant in high school.
The only thing that stops a bad guy with a compiler is a good guy with a compiler.
(Score: 5, Insightful) by Opportunist on Sunday May 28 2023, @12:27PM (3 children)
1. Kick the religious bollocks to the curb. Religion has no room in a classroom unless you want to talk about Religion itself.
2. Realize that sex education is just the same as math, English or physics. There's information to be transmitted, find out in what grade you can transmit what information. Start with the elementary topics and build on top of them, just as you do with other subjects.
3. Make sure you have competent teachers who aren't trying to teach a subject they never heard about themselves. You wouldn't want a Spanish teacher who never learned a word of Spanish, why would you expect a 50 year old virgin to be competent to teach teenagers about sex?
(Score: 2) by inertnet on Sunday May 28 2023, @12:51PM (1 child)
That's why I don't understand why Albania is involved in the education of Australian youth.
(Score: 3, Informative) by hendrikboom on Sunday May 28 2023, @01:10PM
Anthony Norman Albanese ( /ˌælbəˈniːzi/ AL-bə-NEEZ-ee or /ˈælbəniːz/ AL-bə-neez;[nb 1] born 2 March 1963) is an Australian politician serving as the 31st and current prime minister of Australia since 2022. From the wikipedia article [wikipedia.org].
Nothing to do with Albania. (which would have had the adjective 'Albanian'.)
(Score: 2) by Thexalon on Monday May 29 2023, @02:45PM
I'd add that a good help to convincing people of the value of this plan is that contrary to what the religious nutballs think:
1. Teaching kids about sex doesn't make them more likely to have it, and in fact may make it less likely they'll have it (maybe because they know of other options for dealing with those urges).
2. If they do have it, they'll be a lot less risky about it, on average taking more steps to prevent disease transmission and pregnancy.
3. If they aren't going to learn this stuff from school, they're going to learn it from pr0n. Which they are watching, make no mistake. You'd much rather your kids learn it from school than pr0n.
The only thing that stops a bad guy with a compiler is a good guy with a compiler.
(Score: 2) by hendrikboom on Sunday May 28 2023, @01:06PM (3 children)
My daughter got sex education in high school. The teacher was a nurse from the local CLSC (a kind of government-run social and medical services center). My daughter told me the nurse was wonderful and answered all the students' questions factually, without evasion, even the most strange and extreme.
Sad to say, this was the peak of the government's program on sex education. My oldest child was too early to get this program. My youngest got it only after the education ministry had toned it all down following conservative parents' protest.
About this comment's title:
"Family Values" is (if I recall correctly) the sarcastic title of the chapter on sexual behaviour in Pinker's book "How The Mind Works". It is anything but what the restrictive conservatives promote under that rubric.
(Score: 2) by RS3 on Sunday May 28 2023, @02:22PM (2 children)
Your daughter's nurse teacher was evidently a good one.
Q: is there a point where you would draw a line between what's acceptable to teach (and maybe even show pictures and videos) to teenagers, and what isn't?
And how about pre-teens?
(Score: 5, Insightful) by janrinok on Sunday May 28 2023, @04:30PM
I live in France and while it is isn't the hedonistic paradise that some imagine it to be there are very few hang ups regarding the human body. There are often nudist beaches - usually not widely promoted but those who want to sunbathe "au naturale" can do so. Families frequently use them and children have no hang-ups about seeing naked people. We are all the same - give or take a bit here and there.
As such, they are not frightened to talk about the human body either. And that is the very start of sex education. For example, explaining menstruation before young girls encounter it does remove a lot of the fear (and shock) when it first begins. My wife was a teacher and taught, among other subjects, sex education appropriate to the ages of the children in her classes. Once all the initial embarrassment disappeared - she used to say it took about 15 minutes on average - the children were keen to learn rather than horrified at the topic or wanting to know the details that were best left until they were older. Some did ask and she always told them to ask their parents or wait until they were in the appropriate age range.
It usually isn't the kids who are embarrassed but teachers who are unprepared to teach it.
(Score: 2) by hendrikboom on Monday May 29 2023, @12:46AM
Answer the questions they ask truthfully.
(Score: 5, Funny) by hendrikboom on Sunday May 28 2023, @01:20PM
I heard this from my mother who told it to me long after it happened:
There had been a PTA meeting at my primary school about a proposal to give the grade 8 students some sex education.
It was definitively voted down.
She told me that one mother complained that her daughter didn't need to be corrupted by that kind of dirty talk.
To which another replied, "Of course not -- she's been doing it with (name withheld) already".
-- name withheld because I don't remember that detail of hearsay about events from the 1950's. I don't want to post a remembered name that might be someone else's.
(Score: 3, Informative) by VLM on Sunday May 28 2023, @03:06PM
This has the smell of a situation that's 99.99% astroturf being heavily marketed by journalists as only being the purest grassroots.