SEX EDUCATION “SHOULD BEGIN" ABOUT STANDARD 6

Press, Volume XCVI, Issue 28372, 3 September 1957, Page 2

SEX EDUCATION “SHOULD BEGIN" ABOUT STANDARD 6

“Sex education and preparation for parenthood should begin not later than Standard 6 when the child is both curious and unselfconscious. The mistake adults always make is to leave the imparting of sex knowledge too late, thus missing the psychological moment,” said Mrs Nancy Sutherland last evening. She was giving an address entitled “Adolescence—the parents’ point of view,” to a meeting of the Christchurch Parents’ Centre. “The child will only accept the knowledge when it is ready for it,” she said. Adolescents today did not fit into any preconceived plan and did not follow any consistent pattern of behaviour, said Mrs Sutherland. A common attitude of these young people was resentment and rebellion, both open and repressed. They were easily insulted and injured. “I do not think it need be or should be accepted as the natural behaviour of adolescents to the ignorant and inconsistent treatment by society. Above all, they feel misunderstood and in their own words: ‘Nobody tells us about anything.’ The responsibility rests

on our consciousness as parents. The guilt lies squarely upon the shoulders of a society that, while encouraging separation of boys and girls during adolescence in single sex schools and discouraging early marriages, does little or nothing to fill the gap in the long years between sexual maturity and marriage,” Mrs Sutherland said. “Blot on Civilisation” Mr Hugh Lyon, chairman of the executive of the National Marriage Guidance Council of Great Britain, said: ‘‘Our successors may one day regard our failure to deal wisely with this turbulent age group as one of the gravest blots on our civilisation.” In his annual report in 1952 he said: “At first the main object of the founders of the . council was to mend threatened marriages before they were irreparably broken, but this ‘ambulance work’ is now regarded as less important than the work of educating young people for marriage. When evidence came in from all over the country that a large number of the problems encountered need never have existed had either husband or wife known when they were married what they were about, there came

into being an education programme which now absorbs a great part of the council’s activities.

“This is the way, but these groups—Marriage Guidance Council, Family Planning Association. Parents’ Centres, and others—touch only the merest fringe of all those who marry and more often than not they are preaching to the coverted,” Mrs Sutherland said.

“They send us all over the world and do not tell us anything,” said Mrs Sutherland quoting a National Serviceman of 19. This was almost the universal cry of the adolescents and showed a universal need for knowledge and understanding. The need was so widespread that voluntary groups could not adequately satisfy it. The questions asked by adolescents ranged from the naive to the mature, but all showed the overwhelming need for the education of youth for living and loving aS love was the central and increasing interest from the early to late teens. “Are we meeting this universal need in our education system or outside it ” asked Mrs Sutherland. “An attempt is being made but it is, in the main, ill-con-ceived, unrealistic and unimaginative.” Careful Grading Education for living had to be carefully graded and synchronised with the need of successive age groups The focal point changed from early adolescence, 12 or 13. to late adolescence. But to reach all potential parents it had to be covered before the age of 15— the school leaving age. “Another important aspect is that to be accepted, education about love, marriage and baby bearing must come from both men and women who, in addition to other qualifications, have experienced love, marriage, and child birth. It should be an accepted continuous part of the usua' school curriculum,” said Mrs Sutherland.

The most important thing in the world was giving all children the chance to be good parents The long view was to educate al' potential parents—the adolescents —and to reach them all it had to be done through the existing services, the school before the child was 15. The short view was education for parents and prospective parents.