Link sex education with love, teachers told

BY A SPECIAL CORRESPONDENT
HE way to help a child to understand that sex was not something separate from everything else was to help him interpret Christ's command to "love thy neighbour as thyself," a conference in Liverpool was told at the weekend.
Miss Pauline Myerscough, a lecturer in education, was speaking at a speciel conference on Sex Education in the Primary School. organised by the Liverpool Archdiocesan Catholic Marriage Advisory Council.
Miss Myerscough said that the way to interpret the command lay in the vital early physical experience o f maternal love through which
the child learned to appreciate that his body was capable of being loved and respected and so learned of loving and respecting in return.
She said it was certainly not clear how an adolescent girl could value, love and respect herself if that early experience had been deficient.
TEACHER'S ROLE The teacher had a role to play in this continuing process of true sex education. Although the task differed from that of the parents in some details it must not differ in the open demonstration of
loving relationships exemplified by the enduring qualities of patience, modesty, kindness, hopefulness and an
utter absence of rebuff and revenge.
A-lack of harmonious and sympathetic contacts between home and school emphasised a regrettable separateness of sexuality so that a child only saw it in one or the other context and not integrated into his whole life.
Earlier Miss Myerscough, who has had considerable experience in child guidance work. said that sex was not a separate thing which suddenly cropped up when questions were asked. It was a common dimension and a positive element in our development.
"A DARK CORNER" To separate it into a dark corner is the greatest disservice. It must not be taken away from the whole person. If we do that we do not just make growing up difficult for a child. We lessen and harm him as a person."
Miss Myerscough instanced a special Sex Instruction Week at a secondary school. The separateness of the instruction resulted in an assumption of complete knowledge and a total inability to see sex relations in their context of loving human relationships.
"There is evidence that the way in which children responded to BBC films depended upon family relationships. 11' these have been troubled and unloving, a child will rapidly seize the message that sex and love are not the same thing."
The conference. which was attended by more than 100 teachers. was organised to counterbalance recent programmes and books which have been criticised for dealing with sex eon narrowly.