IN BRITAIN TODAY TV sex-education accepted in primary classrooms

Press, Volume CXI, Issue 32637, 19 June 1971, Page 22

IN BRITAIN TODAY TV sex-education accepted in primary classrooms

(N.Z.P.A.-Reuter copyright. Cable news digest)

LONDON. British television has moved into the classroom once again to teach sex to a new batch of primary schoolchildren with its three-part

eye-opener that has survived a full year of national wrangling.

The repeat showing has been hardly noticed by the critics, who cried the loudest last June, when the British Broadcasting Corporation first screened its sex-education series for school-time vision.

They have concentrated their fire on a new target, “Growing Up,” a sex-educa-tion film by Dr Martin Cole, who hoped to sell it to school boards; but the 8.8. C. seems to have cornered the market One reason that the 8.8.C.’s pioneering effort escaped the worst of the war of words this year may be a. survey completed by the London School of Economics. While still not fully analysed, it clearly comes out on the side of the 8.8. C. showing that the 72 per cent of parents who favoured the series immediately after viewing it had increased in number to 77 per cent three months later.

CHILDREN IN FAVOUR As for the children themselves, they were overwhelmingly in favour of it. With a wildlife film as a yardstick for comparisons, the L.S.E. research team found that 91 per cent enjoyed the wildlife film, and that about 86 per cent liked all three sex films. Only 2 per cent disliked the wildlife film and 1.5 per cent disliked all the sex films. The others liked parts of the films. Parents reported that whereas only 6 per cent of the children surveyed knew all about sex before the films, 11 per cent did afterwards; the 22 per cent who knew a lot before increased to 61 per cent afterwards; the 62 per cent who knew a little fell to 26 per cent; and the knownothings, from 10 per cent to 1 per cent. THREE QUESTIONS The 8.8. C. began the series in an effort to answer the three most common sex questions asked by children eight and nine years old: Where do babies come from?; how do they get out?; and what makes them grow? The first film, “The Beginning,” starts with an egg dividing, and brings growth up the scale. The second, “Birth,” uses diagrams and ends with a film clip on the actual birth of a baby. The third, “Full Circle,” shows the physical differences between the sexes, shows naked children swimming, and ends with adult models in art class. The act of sexual intercourse is described, but not shown.

About 180,000 British children in primary schools saw this series last June; perhaps more than that will see it this year. It is already planned to be rescreened again in 1972. CHANGED ATTITUDES It was not only the actual knowledge of sex—the words and the actions and the results —that penetrated the children’s minds. Attitudes changed, too. Before seeing the film, 55 per cent of the children surveyed thought it “very naughty to have no clothes on." After the film, only 24 per cent thought so, while the 20 per cent who did not think nakedness naughty increased to 37 per cent afterwards. Similar percentage shifts followed in attitudes about whether having a baby hurt the mother. “In summary,” Mr Rex Rogers, the research officer said, “our research suggests that the 8.8. C. films are generally successful in putting over the basic facts of human sexuality without antagonising either parents or children. “They seem to have no untoward effects of the kind suggested by the opponents of sex education. Indeed, they seem to reduce emotional attitudes and misunderstandings about sex.” New passenger train awaited Britain’s 155-mile-an-hour Advanced Passenger Train hjjjl begin track-tests within tne next two months. The A.P.T., which will run on existing tracks, avoiding the huge expense of laying new high-speed lines, will nevertheless cut the present journey times dramatically. For example, the 393-mile run from London to Edinburgh, on which the fastest time now is five hours and 45 minutes, will be trimmed to three hours and 40 minutes. SELF-STEERING

The special suspension and self-steering bogie system will enable the train to negotiate curves at speeds up to 50 per cent faster than trains of conventional design. The coaches tilt as they negotiate curves to counter the sideways thrust at high; speed that would otherwise

. throw passengers out of their seats. 3 Dr Sydney Jones, who is ■ the member of the British > Rail Board with special res- ( ponsibility for engineering and research, hopes that the first ’ fare-paying passengers will be t carried in May, 1974.

TWO TYPES The A.P.T. was conceived and developed at British Rail’s 20-acre technical centre i at Derby. Two types are being built —one with gas-turbine propulsion, the other with electric traction. Aerodynamic-ally-styled power cars in the gas-turbine version have four 300 h.p. British Leyland engines. Initial test-runs of the gasturb'me prototype will begin soon, full-scale tests will build up towards the end of the year. Then will come the long process of modification and the building of an A.P.T. fleet The train is 100 per cent British-made apart from its special wheels, from a Swedish company, incorporating a special rubber shockabsorbing component. British officials have visited various countries, including Sweden, the United States, France, Switzerland, Australia, Canada, Brazil, and South Africa to discuss the potential of the A.P.T. One of the latest feasibility studies was for the Israeli Government for a SUS24Om, 35-mile high speed rail link between Tel Aviv and Jerusalem.

Dr Jones predicts that if the tunnel under the English Channel is built, the A.P.T. will link London and Paris in two hours 40 minutes. Steelworkers’ dilemma Thousands of workers being made redundant by the British Steel Corporation are expected to be offered jobs in the West German steel industry, “The Times” reports. Official approaches to the corporation on behalf of some of West Germany’s largest producers are understood to be imminent. The West German Embassy in London is dealing with a record 80 to 100 inquiries a day, chiefly for entry visas and work permits, from unemployed and employed skilled workers; and the number of visas and permits granted this year may rise to between 10,000 and 20,000, compared with 6000 last year. Tunnel link sutdy begun The first phase of a new study of the proposed Channel tunnel linking Britain and France has begun, perhaps in anticipation of the outcome of the negotiations for British entry into the Common Market. It will be concerned with all aspects of the project—economic, financial, technical and engineering, and is expected to take about a year. If it shows that a deepbored railway tunnel is the right choice, then phase two of the study will begin. This would involve a more detailed engineering and design plan likely to cost about £lsm. The first-phase study, costing between £500,000 and £750,000 is being made by a joint team of British and French companies—R.T.Z. Development Enten>rises and Societe d’lngenierte du Tunnel sous la Mer. NEW COMPANIES Two new companies, again one British and one French, have been formed to complete the studies into the tunnel project, prepare the financial side, and build the tunnel if and when it is approved. The companies will be called the British Channel Tunnel Company and the Societe Francaise du Tunnel sous la Manche. The two chairmen will be Lord Harcourt and General Maurin. Included among the directors of both will be representatives of British, French, 1 and American merchant banks and the British and French Railways. New service for surgeons A new television station to enable doctors to watch com- , plicated surgical operations and medical lectures will open in London on. October

Called Channel 7, it will be a closed-circuit system linked to nearly 70 hospitals, medical schools, and postgraduate colleges in London.

Sponsored by the University of London, its aim will be to greatly extend the audience for medical lectures and surgery. An outside broadcast unit will visit hospital operating theatres. When the station opens, it will screen 12 programmes a week, all on medical subjects, but it is planned later to extend its coverage to all the subjects within the curriculum of the University of i London.

j But close-up shots of surigery present certain problems •for the cameramen. “The first Itime we went into an operat-

r ing theatre,' the cameraman fainted immediately,” Dr s Peter Owen, one of the proi ducers of Channel 7, said - this week. i [Problem for immigrants j One in every six immigrant > children in Britain has ' trouble following school lest sons because of language dif- . Acuities, according to a . research book just published. A survey disclosed that > school authorities tend to '■ help Asian and Cypriot childI ren before West Indians, and the book calls for more to . be spent on teaching English ito West Indians speaking I Creole dialect. Last year, 43,000 of the , 262,000 immigrant children at ’ school in Britain were said by their head teachers to be ' unable to follow the school curriculum because of lan- : guage difficulties, according to the survey. Computer inquiry A team of independent computer experts is trying to find out if it is possible for confidential replies to census questions to be leaked to unauthorised people, the “Daily Telegraph” reports. The detailed investigation, which is expected to take another month, has the approval of the Government, which is anxious to dispel any doubts that commercial firms might get hold of personal information from computer 1 records. 1 The British Computer Society offered to undertake ’ the investigation after doubts ! had been raised about the | security of the census. ’ The society’s general secre-; tary, Mr Maurice Ashill, said that the team had already, received a substantial amount; of documentary evidence from the Registrar-General , (Mr Michael Reed). The investigating panel also includes representatives of the Royal Statistical Society. Japan lowers whisky tariff Reductions of up to 50 per cent in tariff levels on exports of Scotch whisky to Japan are being contemplated by the Japanese Government. This was indicated by the Japanese Foreign Minister (Mr Kiichi Aichi) at a press conference in London at the end of his two days of talks with British Cabinet Ministers. Referring to Japan’s generalised preferences scheme, which is to be implemented at the beginning of August, Mr Aichi said that the British Government had been told that the liberalisation of whisky would be effective from January of this year, and the next stage would be reductions in tariff levels. Asked what that would mean, Mr Aichi said that it would require legislation but his Government hopes to reduce tariffs by 50 per cent of their present level.

Confectionery would also be liberalised by Japan from the beginning of September. Assassination bid recalled

General Charles de Gaulle has been dead little more than six months, but already the folklore and fiction has begun to emerge, embellishing the facts surrounding his remarkable career.

Now a young British journalist, Frederick Forsyth, has come up, with a story that will be read all over the world and has become a huge financial success even before its publication.

In “Day of the Jackal,” Mr Forsyth has tied a tightlyplotted suspense novel to some of the known facts.

The book, published by Hutchinson this week, is due to come out in at least 10 countries, and to become a film.

Mr Forsyth- has cleverly combined historical names and events with his story of a secret assassination attempt on General de Gaulle which almost succeeded; and in pre-publication newspaper stories in Britain and France, writers have taken the bait, speculating on whether the book might really reflect some longhidden secret.

Mr Forsyth has achieved his effect by drawing heavily on his experience as a foreign correspondent in Paris; he has interlarded his story with capsule descriptions of real French Cabinet Ministers and Government officials, General de Gaulle himself, and some of the men who really did plot against the former President in the early 19605. Indeed, the book begins with a brief account of that spectacular attempt on the general’s life when gunmen of the O.A.S. ambushed a Presidential convoy in 1962, and General de Gaulle sat disdainfully Upright as bullets smashed through the back window of his limousine.