Sex Education

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Sex Education In Ghana Should Be Prioritised (Video)

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Africa/ Ghana/ 07.11.2018/ Source: www.modernghana.com

The United Nations Population Fund (UNFPA) is leading the process of harmonizing sexual and reproductive health education in Ghana.

It has consequently in collaboration with Civil Society Organisations (CSOs) among other stakeholders, whose work focuses on the area, put together a national guideline document for Comprehensive Sexual and Reproductive Health Education (CSE).

This would be for both in-school and out-

of-school education purposes.

The move is to adopt a standardized approach towards delivering CSE in the country in line with the international United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO) guidelines for CSE.

It forms part of a joint programme being implemented by UNFPA in collaboration with the United Nations Children’s Fund (UNICEF), aimed at empowering adolescent girls.

An orientation workshop on the national guidelines for the CSE has therefore been held in Accra for the relevant CSOs to collate their inputs for workable curricula to be developed to facilitate teaching and learning in the area.

The workshop, attended by 42 participants was organized by the UNFPA with funding support from Global Affairs Canada.

Mr. Niyi Ojuolape, Country Representative of UNFPA, said it was one of the key activities being carried out for the CSOs as part of a concerted advocacy effort to drive home the need for an updated CSE content.

He said in order to achieve greater national impact, it was imperative to harmonize CSE delivery

across the board, insisting that CSOs had a significant role to play.

Mr. Ishmael Kwasi Selassie, a facilitator for the workshop, said community-based CSE by the standard of the new guidelines was intended to be delivered to young people starting from age six and terminating at age 24.

“It is a systematic approach to equip young people with knowledge, skills, attitudes, and values they need to determine and enjoy their sexuality, that is, physically and emotionally, individually and in relationships” he stated.

He said the objective was to provide young people with an avenue to acquire accurate and reliable information on reproductive health and rights.

Source of the notice: https://www.modernghana.com/news/895067/sex-education-in-ghana-should-be-prioritised.html

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The birds and the bees

Nayak Paudel

Por Nayak Paudel. 

Sex education has so far been almost non-existent in Nepal’s schools, but there is a growing awareness for its need

Going to school in Nepal, there is a certain section of a certain subject that many teachers and even students shy away from. At the secondary level, under health and population studies, is a chapter about sexual and reproductive health. There have been instances of teachers completely skipping this chapter or asking the students to study it themselves at home. Even when teachers do teach the section, it is limited to biology and spoken about scientifically. Sex education as such doesn’t seem to exist in Nepal.

Sex education isn’t just related to biology and reproduction, contrary to what Nepal’s secondary school curriculum proscribes. It includes all issues related to human sexuality, including human anatomy, sexual activities, reproductive and sexual health, safe sex, sexual orientations, birth control, family planning and reproductive rights.

In Nepal, secondary level textbooks include chapters on reproductive organs, ways to prevent STDs, the use of contraceptives and menstruation. At higher levels, only biology has chapters on reproductive organs, thus, only a science faculty student will have access to it. But, as outlined above, the tendency is to avoid talking about sex, the implication being that Nepali society still feels ashamed taking about such issues and, in many places, it’s still taboo.

Partial sex education, at least concerning biology, reproduction and health, was incorporated into the curriculum with the understanding that sex education is one of the most essential things that students needs to learn to take right decisions. But sex education has also been said to play an important role in minimising increasing cases of sexual violence against women and children.’

Nepal Police data shows that, in the last fiscal year, among victims of rape, 64 percent were girls below 18 years of age. The Nepal Police has thus come up with a campaign to provide sex education through their newly-launched Community-Police Partnership campaign.

“Sexual violence can be minimised to a great extent if students are made aware about it through sex education,” said Senior Superintendent of Police (SSP) Uttam Raj Subedi, Central Police Spokesperson. “Thus, in our campaign, sex education is a major concern.”

The Nepal government too is attempting to promote sex education in schools and communities through its Comprehensive Sexual Education (CSE) programme. CSE covers all aspects of sex education—human sexuality, human sexual anatomy, sexual activity, sexual reproduction, reproductive health, reproductive rights, safe sex, birth control, sexual abstinence along with emotional relations and responsibilities. The government has thus assured that CSE will be included in its upcoming curriculum, beginning from grade one itself, according to Lekha Nath Poudel, Director General of the Curriculum Development Centre at the Ministry of Education, Science and Technology.

“However, not all classes will include curriculum related to sexual education, because we cannot revise the entire curriculum at once,” said Poudel. “Courses including CSE will be added to the curricula of standards one, two and three and then in the higher classes in the first phase.” Poudel, however, mentioned that sex education will be provided to students from all faculties.

CSE, if delivered beginning from the primary school level itself, can help students understand basic but important issues such as ‘good touch’ and ‘bad touch’. Sex education can also help students identify and protect themselves from abuse. To that end, the government will be partnering with various other organisations to impart CSE.

“To bring a change in our education system at once is difficult and will require a change in policy. Till then, we will be cooperating with international organisations to promote and provide sexual education,” said Baikuntha Prasad Aryal, spokesperson for the Ministry of Education.

The Ministry of Education, in cooperation with the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organisation (UNESCO), United Nations Population Fund (UNFPA) and UN Women, has already been conducting programmes to promote CSE in five districts—Bajura, Accham, Sunsari, Rautahat and Sarlahi. The programme is already helping to raise awareness about sexual health and sexual rights among students in the five districts, claimed Balaram Timalsina, Education Chief at UNESCO Kathmandu.

“At first, many communities refused to attend the programme believing that it was only about education regarding sex and that everybody already knew about it. But later, when they were told about other aspects of sex education, they were keen to learn,” said Timalsina.Private schools, too, are attempting to incorporate some form of sex education into their curriculum.

“We don’t focus on reproductive health because it is already in our curriculum, but we are providing two extra classes every week to students of class 10 and higher regarding emotional attachment with their future partners, which is also part of sex education,” said Father George PM, principal at St Xavier’s School, Jawalakhel. Over a decade ago, St Xavier’s was one of the few schools in the Kathmandu Valley that provided sex education as a separate subject. Now, it appears they have changed focus. “We will be teaching the importance and morals of marriage along with how to bring up children,” said Father George. ‘

A few private schools might be providing extra classes or supplementary sex education but the umbrella organisation for private schools, Private and Boarding School Organization Nepal (PABSON), has not been able to institute an overall programme for all its constituent schools. The organisation, however, applauded the institutions that are providing extra classes on sexual education and has assured mandatory policies regarding sexual education will be instituted in the near future. It has requested other institutions to promote such classes for their students till something formal is enshrined.

“We have been holding discussions over promoting sexual education regularly since sex is mostly hidden in our communities. Sex education is important so we will soon be making plans to provide such classes in every institution under us,” said DK Dhungana, senior vice-president of PABSON.

However, it is not enough to simply institute sex education classes. Teachers need to be trained on how to impart sex education and how to talk sensitively about issues like sexuality, sexual health, orientation, contraception, consent and reproductive anatomy, say experts. They’ve also argued that the government’s recent ban on pornographic content can affect sexual education and awareness among the public.

“Some pornographic content is important for people to acquire knowledge about sexual life,” said sexologist Dr Subodh Kumar Pokharel. “The government should have been clear on the categories of pornographic content before taking such steps.”

Source of the article: http://kathmandupost.ekantipur.com/news/2018-11-03/the-birds-and-the-bees.html

 

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Sex Education’: James Purefoy ficha por la nueva serie de Netflix protagonizada por Gillian Anderson

Reseñas

Por Julio Marín

La serie contará el calvario de un joven adolescente virgen que no tiene habilidades para iniciar una relación sexual a pesar de que su madre es terapeuta sexual.

‘Sex Education’ es una serie de Netflix de origen británico que contará con Asa Butterfield (Otis) y Gillian Anderson (Jean) como principales protagonistas. Butterfield será un adolescente virgen y con una obsesión con el sexo que lo conduce hacia la torpeza. Paradójicamente, su madre es una terapeuta sexual, lo cual le lleva a abrir una clínica sexual clandestina en el instituto junto a su amiga Maeve.

El último en sumarse a este reparto es James Purofoy, estrella de series como ‘Roma‘ o ‘The Following‘, que dará vida a Remi en la nueva ficción de Netflix. Su papel no pasará desapercibido, e interpretará al exmarido de Jean y al padre de su hijo Otis. El actor aparecerá en algunos capítulos pero no será un personaje recurrente.

La propia protagonista, más conocida por su papel de Scully en ‘Expediente X‘, lo ha confirmado a través de una foto que ha publicado en sus redes sociales, en la que aparece la familia ficticia sonriente y feliz bajo el irónico título elegido por Anderson: «Exfamilias casi felices». Pronto descubriremos si todo es tan maravilloso y «casi feliz» como lo pintan en la publicación.

Sex Education’, nueva apuesta de Netflix

La nueva serie de Netflix está escrita y creada por la guionista Laurie Nunn y arrancó su producción en primavera. ‘Sex Education’ cuenta detrás con la productora Eleven, cuya responsabilidad también recae sobre otras series como ‘Gap Year’ o ‘The Endfield Taylor’. Respecto a la producción ejecutiva estará compuesta por Jamie Campbell, Ben Taylor y Joel Wilson.

Fuente de la reseña: https://www.formulatv.com/noticias/82016/sex-education-james-purefoy-nueva-serie-netflix-gillian-anderson/

 

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Sex education given LGBT-inclusive overhaul in Wales

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Por: theguardian.com/27-06-2018

Supporters of planned changes say country can be a global leader in teaching the subject

Wales could soon be “leading the way” in relationship and sex education (SRE) in schools after announcing an overhaul of its curriculum.

The changes, which include the subject being renamed relationships and sexuality education, were announced by Wales’s education secretary, Kirsty Williams, who said the days of traditional sex education were “long gone”.

In a departure from the traditional teaching approaches, and coming 30 years after the introduction of section 28, which banned the “promotion of homosexuality in schools”, the subject will be LGBT inclusive. It will also focus on wider issues such as consent, domestic abuse and respecting diversity.

It will form a statutory part of Wales’s new curriculum, which comes into force in 2022, for all children aged from five to 16 and will be embedded across the curriculum rather than taught as a separate subject.

The announcement follows a report by Wales’s sex and relationship education expert panel, which concluded that SRE was often too biological and too negative, with not enough attention given to rights, gender equity, emotions and relationships.

Williams said: “The world has moved on and our curriculum must move with it. Sex should never be taught in isolation for the simple reason that it is about so much more than just sex; it’s also about relationships, rights and respect and that must go hand in hand with a much broader understanding of sexuality. Anything less does a disservice to our learners and teachers.”

The announcement was welcomed by charities and campaigners includingStonewall Cymru. The charity’s director, Andrew White, was a member of the expert panel and said his charity had lobbied for years for this change.

He said: “It’s great news, particularly as this week is the anniversary of the introduction of section 28 and our research shows that a majority of LGBT young people here in Wales have heard nothing about LGBT issues in the classroom.

“The legacy of section 28 unfortunately still lives on and this change will go some way to readdressing the balance.”

He said it was important that issues were discussed in the classroom. “If we don’t, those conversations will happen on the web with sometimes unreliable sources.”

The panel’s chair, Emma Renold, a professor of childhood studies at Cardiff University, said the changes would mean sex and the issues surrounding it would not be limited to biology lessons. “It will broaden it out so you can cover the issues in humanities and expressive arts as well as science for example,” she said.

“We identified what constitutes high-quality SRE provision and provided the Welsh government a blueprint because we were calling for a major overhaul. It’s not just about curriculum content but about developing the infrastructure, teacher training and support systems that are necessary to ensure it actually works.”

She said the changes were more progressive than in England and could mean Wales would soon be leading the way internationally when it comes to sex education.

Eleri Butler, the chief executive of Welsh Women’s Aid, said the new curriculum was a positive step towards eradicating violence and abuse.

She said: “It’s vital that children and young people learn about age-appropriate relationships and sexuality education, and have access to high-quality learning and support about equality, safety, sexual consent and healthy relationships.”

Since you’re here …

… we have a small favour to ask. More people are reading the Guardian than ever but advertising revenues across the media are falling fast. And unlike many news organisations, we haven’t put up a paywall – we want to keep our journalism as open as we can. So you can see why we need to ask for your help. The Guardian’s independent, investigative journalism takes a lot of time, money and hard work to produce. But we do it because we believe our perspective matters – because it might well be your perspective, too.

*Fuente:https://www.theguardian.com/education/2018/may/22/sex-education-given-lgbt-inclusive-overhaul-wales

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Think Tank: States Aren’t Teaching Consent in Sex Ed

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By: usnews.com/16-05-2018

Not all require teachers to mention ‘healthy relationships,’ ‘sexual assault’ or ‘consent’ in class.

The Center for American Progress recently released an analysis of what it called «the current state of sex education standards» across the U.S., focusing on discussions of consent and healthy relationships in those teaching standards. Analysts at the think tank considered state laws in 24 states and Washington, D.C., that require sex education in public schools and found that not all states address those topics in their sex education standards.

According to the review, just 10 states and Washington, D.C., reference «healthy relationships,» «sexual assault» or «consent» in their sex education programs.

Rhode Island, West Virginia and Washington, D.C., mandate detailed state standards that «address aspects of sexual health and clearly categorize topic areas» by age, according to the analysis. Hawaii, Maine, Maryland, North Carolina and Vermont don’t spell out these requirements, but they have revamped state standards to address consent or health relationships.

Moreover, the review found that California, New Jersey and Oregon have comprehensive sex education standards, requiring teachers to discuss healthy relationships as part of sex education. Each state, CAP says, requires educators to use medically correct materials, as well as incorporate lessons on healthy relationships or consent. California, New Jersey and Oregon also boast teen pregnancy rates 3, 4 and 11 percent lower than the national average, respectively. 

The majority of the states analyzed – Delaware, Georgia, Iowa, Kentucky, Minnesota,Mississippi, Nevada, New Mexico, North Dakota, Ohio, South Carolina and Utah – reportedly provide teachers with little guidance on which subjects should be covered in sex education curriculums. Those teachings cover pregnancy prevention and preventing sexually transmitted diseases, but don’t address the development of healthy relationships and don’t divide standards by age, according to the review.

Still, the think tank reports that a number of reforms are building momentum in state legislatures across the country.

*Fuente: https://www.usnews.com/news/best-states/articles/2018-05-15/cap-states-arent-teaching-consent-healthy-relationships-in-sex-education

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EEUU: How #MeToo can guide sex education in schools

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 Por: theconversation.com/Melissa Kang/21-03-2018

 Six months after the explosive allegations of sexual harassment against Hollywood producer Harvey Weinstein came to light, giving impetus to the #MeToo movement, this series looks at the aftermath of the movement, and if it has brought about lasting change to sexual harassment and gender equality.

The #MeToo movement has generated much needed discussion about inappropriate sexual behaviour and what constitutes consent to any sexual encounter. Despite some backlash, there is a sense women have reached a new level of agitation that won’t settle. The groundswell of anger might be sufficient to sustain a deep dismantling of systems of sexual discrimination against women.

But such cultural revolutions require change at many levels, from the interpersonal to the institutional. Young people are important in this revolution – many are leaders of the movement. Others need the knowledge and skills to recognise and interpret signals, and assert their own positions within the complex, often confusing situations that require sexual negotiation and consent.

These are learned informally from parents, carers, peers and the media. Formal school education is widely accepted as one of the appropriate institutions for teaching children and adolescents about relationships, sexual and reproductive health, and personal responsibility.

Post-#MeToo, teachers who are already engaged in skills-building in the area of consent might explore its nuances. They might delve deeper into sexual harassment and what it looks and feels like. And help shift young people’s understanding that consent is not just about (mainly) girls saying “no”, but also (mainly) boys understanding “yes”.

The importance of sexuality education

This year, the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organisation (UNESCO) published a revised version of their 2009 International Technical Guidance on Sexuality Education.

This report summarises decades of evidence of the positive impact comprehensive sexuality education has on measurable aspects of sexual behaviour. These include delaying commencement of sexual intercourse, reducing the number of partners and increasing use of contraception and condom use.

Other desirable outcomes, such as less gender discrimination and gender-based violence, and healthy relationships, have been less rigorously studied. But these are also likely to be positively impacted by comprehensive sexuality education.

Teaching consent

In Australia, the principles of sexuality education are covered by the national Health and Physical Education curriculum. This includes a range of topics broadly classified as aspects of consent.

As early as kindergarten, the curriculum areas include:

  • Understanding in what situations parts of the body should be kept private
  • recognising one’s own emotions and learning how to express them, and
  • being able to name people you trust and places you feel safe.

As the curriculum progresses through primary and secondary school, these themes continue. Attention is paid to understanding the body as it develops, recognising emotion, exploring empathy and respectful relationships, particularly between peers.

During the mid-adolescent years, risk-taking behaviours and peer influences are a natural feature of development. At this point, the curriculum articulates the need for students to learn “practising skills to deal with challenging or unsafe situations” and “asserting their stance on a situation, dilemma or decision …”

Young people are playing an important role in dismantling of systems of sexual discrimination against women. Photo by Nicole Adams on Unsplash

All states and territories will adopt or use the national curriculum as a basis to develop their own health and physical education syllabuses, where additional detail can be found. For example, in New South Wales, the current syllabus for years seven to ten (circa 2003) explicitly discusses teaching the role gender can play in a range of attitudes, behaviours and health outcomes.

Power in relationships is also specifically mentioned. So too is a detailed list of learning outcomes about communication, assertiveness and negotiation.

The new draft NSW syllabus mentions the word consent in three places in years seven and eight, and years nine and ten. But this is done in the broad context of ethical relationships, not specifically sexual.

The Victorian curriculum (circa 2016) also articulates principles of respect and ethics in relationships and discusses power and gender. A search through the health curricula of other states and territories finds similar themes.

The average age of first intercourse among Australian secondary students is 16 years. But by this time, the majority have experienced some form of (non-penetrative) sexual activity. It’s reassuring that notions of consent appear in the early secondary years alongside learning about personal boundaries, recognising one’s own emotions, and communication skills.

Despite most sexually active secondary students reporting that they have had pleasurable sexual experiences (an important indicator of sexual health), a high proportion consistently report having had unwanted intercourse, with significant gender differences. In 2013, our five-yearly national survey found 28% of female students had had unwanted sex compared to 19% of males.

Intoxication was a common reason (around 50%) for all students, but for females, pressure from a partner was the most common, at 61%. Being frightened was cited by 34%.

About 300 health and physical education teachers in public, independent and Catholic schools across Australia were surveyed in 2011. A whopping 89.6% indicated they had taught communication and negotiation skills with a partner. The evidence looks promising – although “consent” is not specifically named, it is implied.

Will #MeToo help?

Our national curriculum and state syllabuses refer specifically to gender-based and sexual violence and abuse. It is not surprising, however, that despite best intentions, school curricula and quality classroom teaching alone are not sufficient to prevent them.

Perhaps #MeToo will be a signpost, a guide to future classroom discussions. It’s noteworthy that the NSW Minister for Education, Rob Stokes, and Premier Gladys Berejiklian made statements that the #MeToo movement provided new opportunities for teachers to have “open and frank” conversations with students.

This will involve conversations about the building blocks of respect. Teachers and students need to examine why women and their bodies are still objectified despite four waves of feminism. They might also explore the unconscious ways sexism writes the sexual scripts that children and adolescents learn.

This is rich material for many subject curricula, and our teachers have the skills to do this well. It’s only one component of the revolution, but playing an active part is surely what lies at the heart of the #MeToo movement.

*Fuente: https://theconversation.com/how-metoo-can-guide-sex-education-in-schools-93268

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Dangerous proposal’: campaigners in Kenya condemn sex education plan

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Kenya/February 06, 2018/Source: https://www.theguardian.com

Government under fire over incorporation of dedicated lessons about sexuality into national curriculum.

Plans by the Kenyan government to expand coverage of sex education in primary schools have been criticised for encouraging promiscuity among young people.

The ministry of education wants guidance on sex, which is currently incorporated into subjects such as civil education, to become a distinct topic in the country’s new curriculum.

But campaign group CitizenGo has petitioned the ministry, urging it not to implement what it describes as a “dangerous proposal”.

Ann Kioko, campaigns manager for CitizenGo, said: “It is teaching children from a very young age that they are sexual and they can experiment with homosexuality, and that abortion is their right.”

Kioko added that the organisation is not opposed to sex education based on the principle of informing children about the changes their bodies undergo as they get older.

David Oginde, presiding bishop of Christ is the Answer Ministries, one of Kenya’s largest and most influential Pentecostal churches, wrote in a comment piece for a Kenyan newspaper: “Many parents and family organisations are in full support of wholesome sex education. Instead, concern is that, unlike traditional sex education, CSE [comprehensive sexuality education] is highly explicit. With an almost obsessive focus on children obtaining sexual pleasure, CSE promotes promiscuity and high-risk sexual behaviours as healthy and normal.”

But Kennedy Buhere, a spokesperson from the ministry of education, said sex education was already firmly embedded in the existing primary school curriculum.

“It is not a standalone subject, and they [teachers] do not pour everything on the children,” said Buhere. “The knowledge is calibrated to fit the age of the children.”

He added that content about sexuality in the new curriculum had taken into consideration the religious and cultural values of the country as well as the age of the children targeted.

According to the 2014 Kenya demographic and health survey, 18% of teenagers in Kenya were already mothers or were pregnant.

More than 370,000 10- to 19-year-olds became pregnant in Kenya between July 2016 and June 2017, according to the UN population fund – almost 29,000 of whom were under 14. Some children in Kenya start having sex as young as eight.

A 2017 survey by the African Population and Health Research Centre showed that while 75% of schools in Kenya cover all sex education topics under the existing curriculum, only 2% of students said they felt they had learned about all of the topics. The centre found that classes focused more on anatomy and HIV prevention.

Data from the country’s National Aids Control Council found that 43% of the 61,000 new HIV infections recorded in 2016 were among young people aged between 10 and 19.

Patrick Oyaro, a doctor and former director of Family Aids Care and Education, a health ministry organisation that offered medical and counselling services to HIV patients in Kenya, said education was critical for schoolgirls.

“If the information is packaged well … it can help protect them, and make choices,” said Oyaro.

Mary Akelo, 17, from Nairobi, had to leave school and give up her dreams of becoming a nurse when she became pregnant.

“I leave my child at the day care to look for casual jobs every day, and sometimes I do not even have the 50 shillings [34p] to pay the caregiver,” she said.

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… we have a small favour to ask. More people are reading the Guardian than ever but advertising revenues across the media are falling fast. And unlike many news organisations, we haven’t put up a paywall – we want to keep our journalism as open as we can. So you can see why we need to ask for your help. The Guardian’s independent, investigative journalism takes a lot of time, money and hard work to produce. But we do it because we believe our perspective matters – because it might well be your perspective, too.

I appreciate there not being a paywall: it is more democratic for the media to be available for all and not a commodity to be purchased by a few. I’m happy to make a contribution so others with less means still have access to information.Thomasine F-R.

Source:

https://www.theguardian.com/global-development/2018/feb/05/dangerous-proposal-campaigners-kenya-condemn-sex-education-plan
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