Education

Pattern of sex education
by B. A. HARRINGTON
THE purpose of this article is quite simple: to outline some of the principles which may guide the sex education of a child and very briefly to suggest how those principles may be interpreted in practice.
lin• doing so I hope that the need for parents and teachers to understand the parts they are now being encouraged to play will become obvious so that the development of essential attitudes and knowledge will be seen as a co-operative task. I am convinced that this is the way in which harmonious development lies.
Any undue emphasis there may appear to be on the teachers' side is certainly not because of a belief that it is the more important one but because of lack of space in a short article. Parents, I feel, will be interested to know how a growing number of Catholic teachers justify the active and positive role they seek and are taking in the sex education of children in primary schools.
To begin with, a clear distinction has to be made between sex education and sex instruction. The latter tends to be limited to detail and to isolate the knowledge of the procreative process from the context in which it should take place. In so compartmentalising it, it separates its acquisition, from evnlving and emerging sexuality.
The former seeks to place such knowledge naturally and unemotionally within the total development of the whole child hoping that it will then be seen in its true context of married love and the Divine Plan for procreation.
WHOLENESS Details of facts given are such as can be absorbed by a child at a particular age and stage. It seeks thus to avoid the distortion which arises if any human quality is separated from total human growth.
It is this concept of "wholeness" which is implicit in any prospect of sex education and which is in question in the present climate of sex education in schools. The term has 11 become confused with some of the more dramatic programmes linked to sex education which have been open to • criticism on religious, moral, psychological and developmental grounds.
A cool look at a major topic may be lost in heated looks at details. Throwing the baby out with the bath water may be a particularly apt notion in this context, Teachers appreciate that this idea of wholeness operates in their commitment to the educative process. Our children are subject to pressures which support materialistic and competitive values; models of sexual pleasure, performance and inspiration are offered to holster these values.
Lively school programmes at primary and secondary level try to develop in children critical attitudes to mass media techniques. The sexual component in these techniques will be a received message for all our children at their respective levels of understanding. Teachers therefore should offer equivalent resources of knowledge and support in devaluing the crude glorification of sex to which our children are subjected.
Sexual growth in children is of the very fabric of total growth. Christian teaching certainly does not separate it out as a dark extra. Christ's command "Love thy neighbour as thyself" presupposes the early love and care which informs a child that his whole self is lovable.
Based on this he can establish codes of conduct, respect for his body, a value of his physical self. At all stages of education the teacher can be a channel of respect and lovingness and can confirm or destroy this early self-regard.
Two clear points emerge from this discussion. One is the importance of parentteacher relationships. The development of the child as a sexual as well as a learning person requires some possibility of partnership between parents and teachers. Whether, and in what way, the school supports or directs or consolidates what is offered in the home may vary by mutual decision, but opportunities to make real decisions are important.
Children cannot verbalise all their impressions, but there is evidence that they value a respecting home-school partnership and are helped to deal with their sexual growth by the visible witness that sex is not just a feature of "home" or "school" life and unvalued in one or the other context.
The second point is a consideration of the school cornmunity. Curriculum development programmes emphasise the child's need to experience care, affection and respect, not just to he told about it. It is as an actual, physical person,
that he will experience cooperation and affection in his class or school group. Therefore it could well be part of a teacher's task to clarify some of the problems of this physical self, subject during school years to such urgent pressures and changes.
The prospect of sex education cannot generate some vast blueprint which offers a pattern of instruction to all children at all ages. But, in the present social climate and within the recurring pattern of child development, it is difficult to see that teachers can detach themselves from promoting a development to maturity in which sexual maturity is a vital component.
RIGHT MOMENT Sex, and therefore sex education, should be seen within the context of the whole and developing personality. It is for this reason that there can be no right moment as opposed to a wrong moment for being concerned about it. The right moment is usually when a question is asked—at whatever age.
In younger children it is fairly safe to say that there is no emotional involvement with sex. This only begins, and is not even then always developed. from about the age of 12. A very young child gradually begins to explain his or her own body. looking at fingers, grasping toes, exploring his face. Later he begins to learn the names of different parts of his body and to say them.
The importance of giving them the correct names cannot be over emphasised, especially when he discovers his navel and genital organs. Difficulty over not knowing them is frequently met later on, even in adult life, and can he the cause of much embarrassment.
From about the age of three or four most children are full of insatiable curiosity and ask many "why's" and "how's", They ask because they want to know, and for a parent not to answer is to risk break ing the bond of trust between them.
Later, boys and girls notice and draw attention to the difference in sexual organs, They should then be told that they were made different by God so that. one day, when they grow up. they may become a mother or a father. It is vital at this time to link their sexual organs with a definite Godgiven purpose and not to allow any idea of shame to enter.
From about five OS eight years children will notice pregnancy and be thrilled with awe and wonder at the new fife developing in the mother's womh—a word they will become familiar with through the "Hail Mary." Before the end of a child's stay in the primary school, from about eight or nine years of age to 11, the child will normally want to know how the baby got there and how itgets out.
He is then ready to know the basic facts of intercourse told in the context of the love of mother and father, of how they talk about loving their child and each other. that it is when they are showing their own special love for each other, that the sperm passes from father to mother.
The bridge is the penis, the door to the womb is the vagina. If the sperm meets an egg or an ovum a new baby may start to grow in the womb. He will want to know that it is loved and nourished until it is big enough to come through the birth passage, the vagina. The benefit of prior familiarity with these terms is obvious.
It is important that when the right question arises or is stimulated in some way by the parents that girls know the facts of and are prepared for menstruation. Similarly, boys should understand what is happening if nocturnal emissions or "wet dreams" occur.
It should also be remem-, bored that if boys and girls ask about each other at this stage they should he told. so that later they will be able to give each other the understanding and reverence they deserve.
It is true, perhaps natural, in view of their own sex education or rather lack of it in the sense and manner referred to here, that parents often fee! embarrassed about all this. Teachers also may feel uncomfortable and ill-equipped to deal with a situation.
If both realise that similar questions are likely to be asked in the home and in the schools, especially if both have an open and frank atmosphere, they will see and seek the help that each can obtain from such courses and lectures that bodies such as the Catholic Marriage Advisory Council are only too willing to give. Cornmon types of answers are then possible and the home-school link further strengthened. Each party will he giving essential support to the other in the interests of the child who is the link between them.
RELATIONSHIPS Such meetings can well open opportunities for teachers to explain how in their general and religious curricula they are setting sex in its proper context of development. Themes and projects are chosen to show to children from their earliest days in school that life is a matter of relationships.
They aim to create right atti tudes to self and so to lay the foundation of a true selfimage and respect. This may not appear to parents as "getting the children on" unless it is fully explained.
The preparation in school of a family theme as suggested in "Exploring God's World," by Fr. Anthony Bullen, gives parents and teachers the opportunity to work together in the matter of vocabulary and the essential knowledge of sex role. Page 47 of the book outlines an approach for children of six to seven for the Visitation, and several teaching points emerge, e.g„ the womb is the place where a baby is before he is born.
The Junior School Religious Education Oourse, "Living and Believing," offers similar opportunities. Thus, the theme "God—Our Loving Father," suggests for the first year friezes, writing, drama to show that life means more than food, the body means more than clothing. (St. Matthew 6.25.) Work on Baptism as rebirth, starting with experiences of new life in nature, can lead to a discussion of new life in a baby. There is the possibility here of incorporating the B.B.C. filmstrip "Where do babies come from?" If it is used in a theme as part of a "whole," there need be no undue emphasis, no surprise, no embarrassment.
The "Growing Christian" series can be very helpful. The themes "We Depend on God," "We Care for People," "A Family Grows Up," can lead children to form correct ideas of life. Likewise "Kindness," "Sincerity," "Courage," as suggested for Junior 3 and "The Proper Use of God's Gifts" and "Our Senses" for Junior 4, encourage children towards the right attitude to love and stress the facts of love which are the facts of life.
With co-operative and understanding frankness by both parents and teachers, primary school children will thus be more adequately prepared for the emotional stresses of adolescence than if they are left to pick up "the facts of life" rather than "the facts of love" in back-of-hand whispers and furtive investigations.
I would like to acknowledge the help I have received from my colleagues at Notre Dame College of Education, Liverpool, in preparing this article and to thank Mr. J. McClorry, Miss P. Myerscough and Miss E. Lloyd for the use of some of the material they prepared for C. M. A. C. — Catholic Teachers Conference on Sex Education in the Primary School in Liverpool in October, 1971.