Concern on sex education films

NOW that the B.B.C. have completed their series of previews of sex education films for primary schools, teachers and parents will he making up their minds whether or not to expose their children to them. Before doing so we recommend them to consider the following facts.
The initiative for these teaching methods came not from parents and teachers as a whole, but from the Schools Broadcasting Council. To the best of our knowledge this body has received no mandate from any national teaching organisation to recommend televised sex instruction of this kind. Nor have they produced any statistical evidence to show whether such teaching is necessary or even desirable.
Evidence of the long-term effects of sex-teaching for the very young is freely available from such countries as Sweden and America, where it was introduced supposedly to offset the rise of promiscuity, V.D., and illegitimacy.
But in Sweden, for instance, where primary school sexeducation in its fullest and frankest terms has been compulsory for 15 years, it is now reckoned that for every 20 births there are one legal and four illegal abortions; 35 per cent of brides are pregnant on their wedding day; V.D. figures
are soaring and it is common for boys to have over 200 sexual partners.
Last July 140 leading educationalists and doctors petitioned the Swedish Government to reverse its policy on sex-education, which, they believed was one of the chief causes for this state of affairs.
In America the situation is even worse. There, sex-education has been used as a pretext for introducing hard-core pornography into the schools in the guise of "sex-manuals." As a result of numerous protests from the public more than 20 state legislatures are now considering drastic changes in their sex-education policy.
The B.II.C. sex-teaching films show what we regard as an unhealthy pre-occupation with the purely physical aspects of human reproduction. Sex is concerned with love, feelings, emotions and mutual responsibilities. It is something that children should learn progressively over a number of years, preferably from their pa rents.
It should not be thrust upon them in one short course at so tender an age. We are seriously concerned about the long-term effects of these films and of those likely to follow them, bearing in mind Swedish and American experience.
We recommend teachers and parents to think very carefully about the possible consequences before allowing their children to be exposed to this material.
Our primary concern is that children should mature with a healthy and responsible attitude to sex. In our view the B.B.C.'s most valuable contribution to this would be a series of programmes aimed at helping and encouraging parents to answer each of their children's questions at the right time, in the right place, in the right way.
P. G. Bevan, F.R.C.S., Dudley Road Hospital, Birmingham; H. M. Cohen, M.D., D.P.H., Schools Medical Officer (Ret.) Birmingham; A. C. Crooke, M.D., F.R.C.P., Director, Department of Clinical Endocrinology, United Birmingham Hospitals; Prof.
C. E. Dent, M.D., F.R.C.P., University College Hospital, London; S. E. Ellison, M.B., B.Sc., D.I.H., Deputy Director, Occupational Health Unit, Central Middlesex Hospital; Ambrose King, F.R.C.S., Adviser in Venereal Disease to the Ministry of Health; Dame Hilda Rose, F.R.C.S., F.R.C.O.G., Ross on Wye; Prof. G. A. Smart, M.D., F.R.C.P., Dean of Medical School, Newcastle on Tyne; D. C. Sturdy, M.B., B.Chir., Birmingham.
Birmingham, 30.