VIEWS ON SEX EDUCATION

THE article on sex education (February 11) by Mr. B. A. Harrington, lecturer in a Liverpool College of Education, is essentially a restatement of the contents of a booklet, "Sex Education and the Primary Child," issued to Catholic primary schools by the Educational Sub-committee of the Liverpool C.M.A.C. Your readers may like to know what has been said about this document by practising teachers in the Liverpool area.
Two months after the issue of the booklet, the views of Catholic teachers in 18 Junior schools/departments and 15 Infant schools/departments in North Merseyside were gathered together. Of these, 17 junior and 13 infant schools were opposed to giving sex education, as recommended in the booklet, to classes or groups of children.
They were also opposed to giving children all the physiological details about sex and the marriage act as advised in the booklet, when answering their questions in class. The teachers in these schools thought that questions in class should be answered truthfully but in general terms, in a simple, straightforward way. It was pointed out that because one child in a class asks a question on sex. it does not indicate that every child is ready for the very detailed information given in the booklet.
To make such an assumption is to ignore the individuality of each child and is inconsistent with the statement at the top of page 5 of the booklet : "as children mature at different rates and ages, their young minds work in different ways."
The general rejection by North Merseyside Catholic teachers of this scheme of sex education in schools is summed-up in the following statement, which is one of the more restrained comments received : "If you embarked on the programme of classinstruction recommended in this publication. there would be nothing sacred left. This is certainly not 'prudent sex education.'" There was general agreement that sex education is primarily the duty of parents and that they should be provided with the necessary information to enable and encourage them to give their children a clear, Christian understanding of the simple facts they
Our Lady
IHAVE recently noticed that many Saturday Masses of Our Lady, which formerly were Feasts "per se," are now given as second choice to Ferias. To my amazement I now find on a Catholic Calendar. that the Feast of Our Lady of Lourdes is also given as second choice to a Feria. This is confirmed by the Ordo of the diocese of Arundel and Brighton,
What has happened? Has the Church forgotten the great Miracle of Lourdes? How Heaven used a child to confound the Theologians? to confirm that at least one Dogma of the Popes was Infallible, and that we are all descended from Adam and Eve?
Till someone more learned than I, can dispel my doubts, will you allow one in his second-childhood to sign himself .. .
One of Our Lady's Fans need to know about how children are conceived and born. It was reported that parents found the C.T.S. pamphlet, "Sex Instruction in the Home," written by Fr. Aidan Pickering, Biology master at Ushaw, provided them with all the information they needed to enable them to instruct their children.
The tear-out sections, one for boys, one for girls, were considered very helpful. The views of the vast majority of practising teachers concerning the primary role of parents, were aptly expressed by a teacher with children of her own : "To preserve the proper sense of its sacredness, parents should give sex education . . to the individual child."
S. R. Pope Headmaster
St. James's Junior School, Bootle, Lanes.
Consensus
ONE or two people have remarked that my letter to you of January 21 was unduly hard on Mr. Davies. This may well be true, as I was under some strain at the time of writing. I apologise -to Mr. Davies and assure him that I was not attempting to question his sincerity. I was simply inviting him to examine his unconscious motivation. an exercise which can sometimes be good for all of us!
In his latest broadside (Feb. 4), aimed in my direction, Mr. Davies seems preoccupied with the need for an arbitrator. Has he never heard of a consensus? Wage settlements imposed by arbitration are rarely very satisfactory. It is usually better to have a negotiated settlement agreed by all the parties concerned. When it comes to theology, this presupposes that people have the humility to admit that their opinions may be wrong.
Frank O'Hara