Compulsory sex education takes onus off parents

The science of sex

Now children's minister Beverley Hughes, with one eye on a 2010 target to halve conception rates among under-18s, is toying with the idea of having compulsory sex education in schools.

At the moment science lessons are supposed to cover this most natural of human occurrences but, science being what it is, the mechanics take primary importance over the emotional side. Whoever said we were a repressed nation?

Furthermore, the syllabus, if we can call it that, varies. Which is inevitable in a voluntary set-up: after all, some faith schools may not wish to impart knowledge about artificial contraception. Or gay and lesbian sex.

So if Hughes is able to make sex education in schools legally enforceable what is she going to do about the faith schools? There is already the taste of another government fudge on the palate.

The role of parents

The puzzling thing is why schools should be expected to be the oracle in the first place. It really is taking the maxim of in loco parentis one step too far.

So the Labour MP Chris Bryant has come up with another idea: booklets to instruct parents on how to instruct their children on sex.

Do the parents - who presumably had some sort of sexual and, dare I say it, emotional contact in order to become parents - not understand the basics themselves?

Desire to love

There is more to our teenage pregnancy rate than the fact that teenagers have sex. There is sometimes a desperate desire to love and be loved - something the teenager fails to find in the family home.

With talk of booklets, targets and legislation, it is all starting to sound so desperate.
But if Hughes's idea comes to fruition, we can at least no longer blame the parents: we can blame the schools.

More information

Brook
Family Planning Association