With subjects such as safer sex, contraception, pregnancy and personal views about sex up for discussion, helping with a few logarithms seems the softer option, especially since the little dears are expected to take the information they’ve gleaned back to school for further analysis.
The Healthy Respect people insist that parents need not worry about their private opinions forming the basis of a classroom debate, and that none of their “specific answers” will go any further than their child’s notebook, but how can that be guaranteed? The idea is that pupils will only report back on what it was like talking to mum and dad, rather than repeating their parents’ answers verbatim. But anybody who has had the vaguest acquaintance with human nature knows if you give a group of schoolchildren the ammunition of intimate information, they’ll use it — if not in the classroom then in the playground.
It worries me that this sort of sex education programme might prevent the sort of interaction between parent and child that it’s trying to promote. While the sheer ineptitude of some parents makes initiatives such as Healthy Respect absolutely necessary, most decent parents would be quite happy to have a cosy chat about sex, the universe and all that without it having to be part of a school project. Giving children sex education as homework puts an unnecessary pressure on families to discuss things to an agenda, rather than on a need-to-know basis.
Some children mature quicker than others and some parents won’t want to discuss certain issues until they feel their child is ready, and that should be respected. While I understand the need to help the children and parents who don’t communicate well together, it’s a pity the parents who are willing to talk end up being bulldozed into doing it at a time and to a schedule that isn’t of their choosing.
The children in Midlothian are being given “home activity resource” packs. Thankfully, nervous parents won’t be required to give tips on performance, but they will have to juggle a few cut-out diagrams and answer eager questions about how sexual attitudes have changed since they were young.
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Remembering that far back might be the biggest challenge of all.
The Family Planning Association has welcomed the initiative, saying: “Children are always interested in what their parents did before they were born.” And thank goodness for that, because chances are that Mummy and Daddy haven’t done it since.
Education, of a very different sort, is also a hot topic in the Highlands and Islands. Men are lagging behind women when it comes to entering further education, so moves are being made to lure them in.
Bizarrely, some of the reasons given for men being 25% less likely to participate in higher education were “peer pressure” and “availability of role models”. Further education, apparently, just isn’t manly enough.
I just can’t believe that, especially now I’ve seen some of courses being offered as particularly man-friendly: canoe-building in Kinlochleven; golf in Dornoch; and wine appreciation in Skye. It all sounds delightful, but would you really want to pursue such pastimes in an educational environment? These courses seem to have been created simply to attract men and so bump up the numbers. But until they are offered something more substantial, the Highland men are likely to stay at home.