Susie O’Brien: Why Victoria’s new approach to sex education should be welcomed
Remember giggling like idiots while rolling condoms on carrots and cucumbers, and sniggering while our teacher drew pictures of reproductive organs? That’s exactly why we should welcome this new approach to sex ed, writes Susie O’Brien.
Susie O'Brien
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I recently asked some primary school mums to reveal the funniest thing their kids have ever said to them.
Many of the answers were about sex and body parts.
One little preppy asked his mother to help him make a baby because he was worried he “won’t know where the bits go”.
Others were a little confused about basic anatomy.
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“Mum, when are you going to grow a doodle?” asked one three-year-old boy.
Another little girl proudly bragged that she knew where China was, then pointed downwards. She had it mixed up with a part of the female anatomy.
Another was asked by the maternal health nurse if she was a boy or a girl. “I’m virgin,” she answered proudly.
Others were already thinking ahead.
“Mummy, when I’m older and you’re dead, can I have your bras?” asked one girl.
Not surprisingly, there’s a lot of work being done to ensure our kids have access to good quality, well-researched sex education in primary school.
It sure looks like will they need it.
This week a new sex education teaching module for Victorian state schools was launched. Primary and secondary school kids will learn about different sexualities, genders and cultures in a “sex-positive, accurate and non-judgemental” way.
Kids from grade three will learn about donor conception, IVF surrogacy and other forms of assisted reproduction under the module “Sometimes It Takes Three to Make a Baby”.
Fertility issues are introduced in year five, with students learning about how to “preserve fertility”. By year seven they’re learning about preconception health and fertility optimisation.
My, how things have changed.
Back when I was at school, sex ed was much more about avoiding pregnancy and STDs than the finer details of assisted reproductive techniques involving gestational carriers and donor oocytes.
I remember a room full of girls giggling like idiots while rolling condoms on carrots and cucumbers.
We sniggered in the back row while our teacher drew pictures of reproductive organs on the blackboard that looked like reindeers and played grainy films made in Sweden with subtitles. This was
about as sophisticated as it got.
A box of anonymous questions from the class were read out at the start of each lesson.
You know the sort of thing: lots of questions about “verginity” and “mastrobation”.
“What’s bio-sexuality?”
“Can you get pregnant from swimming in a pool?”
And: “How do you stay awake during intercoursing?”
And: “What is the job of breasts?”
Most of us growing up in the ’70s learned the facts of life from picture books like How Are Babies Made? and Where Did I Come From? The latter was written by Peter Mayle, who also wrote all those books about living in Provence. The back cover shows Mayle and the book’s illustrators in velvet jackets and skivvies; they look as if they should be playing jazz sonatas, not drawing pictures of flying sperm.
Cartoon drawings of nude chubby middle-aged people sharing a bath and cuddling under a patchwork quilt was about as adventurous as Where Did I Come From? got, although it did cover the basics.
How Are Babies Made? was written in the 1960s and skirted around the issues even more. It spent almost as much time on the reproduction of farmyard animals and plants as humans. I am not quite sure what we were meant to get out of paper cut-out illustrations of two hens on top of each other.
Our embarrassed parents would leave a copy of these books on our beds and ask us later on if we had any questions. We never did.
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A few years later, I remember sneaking into my parents’ bedroom with friends to peek at their copy of the alluringly titled The Joy of Sex: A Gourmet Guide to Lovemaking by Dr Alex Comfort.
Tame by today’s standards, it was full of line drawings of naked hairy people, which seemed racy back then.
Most of us managed to get through without being sexual sociopaths or getting pregnant in our teens.
So, I welcome the new approach to sex ed. In the absence of expert guidance, kids will draw their own conclusions, about “intercoursing”, which is not always a good thing.
I’ll leave you with one final quote from the school mums.
One little girl asked her mother: “Mum, have you and dad had sex more than two times? (She’s one of two kids in the family.) Her mother replied that yes, actually, she had. The girl then replied: “What!? Like recently??!!”
— Susie O’Brien is a Herald Sun columnist
Originally published as Susie O’Brien: Why Victoria’s new approach to sex education should be welcomed
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