See Dick and Jane Roll in the Hay
From the desk of The Brussels Journal on Sun, 2007-12-30 13:13
http://www.brusselsjournal.com/node/2813A quote from Scotland on Sunday, 30 December 2007
Sex education lessons should be given to schoolchildren as young as five as part of a bid to combat soaring levels of teenage pregnancy and sexual disease, Scotland’s most senior public health doctor said last night. Dr Charles Saunders, chairman of the British Medical Association’s Scottish consultants’ committee, warned that schools were leaving the safe-sex message so late that many teenagers were already exposing themselves to avoidable risk. […]
Saunders, a consultant in public health medicine at NHS Fife, said: “It needs to start at quite an early age, because if you leave it until they are 12 it is too late because some are already experimenting. […]” Saunders added that all schools should also provide contraception to pupils. Currently contraception is on offer at a small number of schools. He said: “Particularly in rural areas, schools may well be the only way that pupils can access contraception. It may well be that as time goes on it would make sense to have emergency contraception in schools.”
The Scottish Government allows local authorities and head teachers to set their own sex education policies, provided they are deemed appropriate to the age of the child and parents are happy with the subject matter. In the majority of cases children do not learn about sex until Primary Six or Seven, when they are 10 or 11. They are not taught about the dangers of sexually transmitted diseases until secondary school.
A school could introduce sex education in Primary One, provided parents and teachers agreed it was the right move. […] However, a spokesman for the Catholic Church said five-year-olds were too young to understand sex. He said: “[…] It’s way over their heads and would be as pointless as giving a five-year-old a talk on alcohol.”
Topic: See Dick and Jane Roll in the Hay (Read 2043 times)