HAS SEX ED GOT ANY CRED?

by Louise Stewart

"Our sex education was pages 84-85 of a red science textbook. We had one very valuable lesson focused on these already well-thumbed pages. Sadly Mrs Clarke, our teacher did not deviate at all from the textbook. In fact, and sadly, she didn't deviate in any way at all." That was the experience of Andy, 30. Victoria, 27, remembers "learning about the anatomy and drawing pictures of various body parts. We may also have had a video."

For many of us, this was the extent of our school sex education. Girls got a visit from The Tampon Lady to demonstrate the remarkable widthways expansion of a tampon in a small beaker of water whilst boys were marched off to another room to discuss the Vas Deferens. But does the ability to explain the external location of the scrotum help teenagers avoid STIs or reduce teenage pregnancy? And does sex education influence teenager's behaviour and attitude towards sex more than family, peers or the media?

'Love is everywhere, it's everywhere I look around'

Teenagers today are surrounded by sexual images – from soaps getting steamy to pre-teen fashion for girls. The marketing, entertainment and advertising industries recognise that children as young as seven respond to sexual images. This doesn't mean that an eight-year-old will eye-up the top shelf at the newsstand when begging Mum for a packet of Wotsits, but a young girl looking at the cover of the latest issue of Bliss, J17 or CosmoGIRL! will find free lip gloss, the best mini skirts under £20 and the promise of our 'hundred hottest boys' photo shoot. Pre-teen favourites S Club 8 wear tiny skirts and tight tops and Britney, well you'll be lucky to find Britney covering her buffed modesty with so much as a platinum record. The music marketed at the pre-teen and teenage age groups is full of sexually charged lyrics, and boys can while away hours in a darkened room chasing a buxom Lara Croft around a screen.

Baby, don't you wanna, dance upon me,
(Are you ready)
Leaving behind my name, my age.
(Lets go)
(Like that)
(You like it)
(Now watch me)

I'm A Slave 4 U, Britney Spears

growing up fast

The reality is that children start to develop their sexuality well before puberty. At two years of age, a child will touch their genitals and by seven may have begun to masturbate. Some eight-year-olds will notice their pubic hair growing and girls may be taunted about their developing breasts. A group of ten-year-olds in the playground will already be talking about sex and may have begun experimenting.

Jackie Behan, an Outreach worker at Brook, believes sex and relationship education should begin in primary school. She says, "Firstly it's important to stress that it's sex and relationships education – you can't have one without the other. It does need to start in primary school, and by that I mean learning about puberty and body changes."

"Puberty is happening a lot earlier for a lot of young people and so it can be quite confusing if some girls have their period and none of their classmates really know what that means," she adds.

Many people will gasp at the idea of beginning sex education in primary school. Ms Behan says this is "understandable, but I think you need to understand what we mean by that." Brook already delivers sex and relationships education in primary schools, where the issues they cover are very much about confidence building and self esteem. She explains, "We talk about relationships and ask who would you turn to if you had an issue around bullying, who you have a good relationship with (say in the family and at school), how you form friendships and what makes a good relationship."

a textbook manoeuvre

The Department of Education and Skills (DfES) defines sex education (now called Sex and Relationship Education or SRE) as 'lifelong learning about physical, moral and emotional development… it is also about the teaching of sex, sexuality and sexual health.' Looking through the DfES curriculum for SRE however, it is clear that the 'nuts and bolts' or 'what goes where' approach is still very much alive, with topics such as The Main Stages of the Human Lifecycle, The Menstrual Cycle and Fertilization. For some, the clinical explanations can be terrifying. Joel, 21, recounts with humour when he first learnt about the wet dream, "I stayed behind and asked the teacher if this happens to all boys. When told yes, I literally dreaded what turned out to be an agreeable happening." He adds, "I would have appreciated a more aesthetic description rather than logistical."

what do teenagers think?

Ms Behan says that "whilst sex and relationships education has got better in Britain, delivery is still a bit patchy." Celia Duncan, Editor of CosmoGIRL! (a girls magazine with a median readership age of 14), isn't quite so reserved. She says, "Sex education in this country is still failing teens." She cites a CosmoGIRL! survey which found that 41% of CosmoGIRL! readers think their sex education was too little, too late, with another 16% saying the teacher was too embarrassed for the lesson to be useful. She adds, "In this climate it's easy to get confused between playground rumours and fact."

education's important, but it's not all that

The Netherlands' liberal attitude toward sex education is often cited when comparing the effectiveness of SRE in schools. Their SRE programme, with its extensive contraception advice and services, has lead to one of the lowest rates of sexually transmitted infections and unwanted teenage pregnancies in Europe. However, a recent study by the Medical Research Council at Glasgow University, which involved nearly 6000 students aged 13 to 15, found that other factors (such as the level of parental monitoring and the ability to talk openly to their partner) were more important than a specially designed sex education programme when it came to young people's sexual risk-taking. Indeed, it even identified different rates of sexual activity between schools.

learning to talk

Ms Behan says, "Young people say to us repeatedly that they get a lots of the nuts and bolts information through science classes, but what they really need to complement that – so it all makes sense – is the relationships side as well." She explains that communication skills are a big issue for young people when it comes to sex. "Lots of young people will say 'Yeah we know when to use condoms' but often they don't know how to say that to a partner, or they don't know how to say 'no' if they don't really want to have sex."

do what feels comfortable

What of the other sources of information about sex available to teenagers? Ms Duncan feels that magazines for teenagers play an "incredibly important" role in sex education. She draws upon a CosmoGIRL! reader survey which found that 76% of its readers feel happier turning to a magazine agony aunt for sexual health advice rather than their parents or a doctor. She says, "This is largely because a) there is little or no embarrassment factor in reading sexual health information in a magazine and b) the intimate one-on-one relationship CosmoGIRL! has with its readers means they can read and learn this information privately." This does explain the silence only broken by stifled giggles at the end of my sex education class when the teacher asked 'Right, any questions?' It would take a brave 14-year-old to ask in front of his classmates if his lopsided erection was normal.

So what about boys? Where can they turn for trusted, confidential information? Whilst no magazines like CosmoGIRL! exists for teenage boys, many aren't ashamed to flick through their sister's copy. But with no alternative of their own, many teenage boys are looking elsewhere to learn more about sex and their sexuality. In a recent survey, 29% of boys in the UK named pornography as their most significant source of sex education. Ms Behan says this is due to teenagers wanting to know if they're 'normal'. She explains, 'They want to see what people look like and they want to know that they are 'normal'."

Whilst comparison with porn stars is an unlikely (or perhaps, foolhardy) source of information for boys to see what's 'normal', the visual nature of pornography is more comprehensive for an inquisitive mind than the clinical diagrams of the reproductive system which they find in textbooks.

it's in the mix

So whilst the debate on sex and relationship education rages around the world (George W. Bush is spending $100 million on an abstinence programme), it seems that teenagers and pre-teens will continue to gain their education from a variety of sources. Complicating matters somewhat are the mixed messages that teenagers are receiving about sex and the way society talks about sex. Ms Behan says, "It's confusing in society because we are saying you can't have sex until you're 16 but you can get advice and information." So have we got the mix right in the UK? Ms Behan explains, "A survey was done a couple of years ago comparing young people in Britain with young people in the Netherlands, and they asked them the reasons they would have sex for the first time. Most of the reasons given by young people in the Netherlands were about love, being in a relationship and taking it to the next stage, whereas in Britain it was about 'We were drunk'. It showed very different values."