Sex Ed Is Sorely Flawed in Many Countries

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Students often report they are provided with out-of-touch, moralizing, sex-negative and heterosexist sexual education in school.

September 14, 2016

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Sex education in many countries is awkward and blunt, often providing young people with moralizing, sex-negative, out-of-touch and heterosexist instruction.

Publishing their findings in BMJ Open, researchers reviewed 55 qualitative studies that examined the views and experiences of young people who had received sex and relationship education (SRE) in school in the United Kingdom, the United States, Australia, New Zealand, Canada, Japan, Iran, Brazil and Sweden between 1990 and 2015. Most of the students were 12 to 18 years old.

The researchers found that schools, appearing reluctant to acknowledge that sex is an emotionally charged and potentially embarrassing topic, teach SRE as if it were any other academic subject.

Students say they feel particularly vulnerable in SRE. In mixed-sex classes, young men say they fear being humiliated if others perceive them as sexually inexperienced, so they disrupt class in order to hide their anxieties. Meanwhile, young women say they their male classmates harass and judge them in the context of SRE and feel discouraged from participating.

Schools tend to have trouble acknowledging that some students receiving SRE are already sexually active. This detachment from reality results in out-of-touch instruction. SRE can also put a moral spin on sex and fail to acknowledge its pleasurable aspects, while also stereotyping gender roles (e.g., men are predators, women are passive) and often failing to address the needs of LGBT students.

“SRE should be ‘sex-positive’ and delivered by experts who maintain clear boundaries with students,” the researchers concluded. “Schools should acknowledge that sex is a special subject with unique challenges, as well as the fact and range of young people’s sexual activity, otherwise young people will continue to disengage from SRE and opportunities for safeguarding and improving their sexual health will be reduced.”

To read a press release about the study, click here.

To read the study, click here.

Read more articles from POZ, here.