‘Recipe for sexual disaster’

Press, 10 October 1984, Page 9

‘Recipe for sexual disaster’

New Zealand has a recipe for sexual disaster for many young people unless sex education is introduced in schools, say the authors of a book on children’s sexual thinking. Professor Ronald Goldman, a psychologist, of La Trobe University in Melbourne, and Mrs Juliette Goldman, a sociologist working full-time on research, are in New Zealand to give seminars on the four years of research that went into their book. They started their 10-day tour in Christchurch yesterday. The couple welcomed the proposal by the Minister of Education, Mr Marshall, to introduce sex education in Forms 1 and 2 in a pilot scheme. However, they said that health and education programmes should start

when children were aged seven or eight to have real benefit. ■■ Children in the Western world began to mature when they were about 11 or 12, and some even earlier. Yet research in Australia, Britain, Canada, and the United States showed that the general level of ignorance about their bodies and about sex was “quite disturbing,” said Professor Goldman.

“It is quite obvious that children in Standards 2 to 4 are in great need of help and understanding. The research indicates that children are not prepared for sexual maturity in their homes,” he said. “Everybody says the parents’ job is to help them but most parents abdicate. They do not feel competent or

comfortable, and so it seems to us that schools should intervene in the interests of children.”

Arguments that sex education in school encouraged sexual activity among children and higher rates of teen-age pregnancy were misinformed, said Professor Goldman. In the Scandinavian countries, particularly Sweden, where children were prepared much earlier and much more thoroughly about sexuality, problems with sexual activity among the young, pregnancy, and venereal disease were much lower than in the United States and New Zealand. Most teenagers were more sexually active than they used to be, but this was because they were exposed to a more permissive

society. “To attribute this to sex education is a complete inversion of the truth. Sex educators advocate responsible sexuality and the deferring of gratification until one is mature enough to handle it,” said Professor Goldman. Neverthless, young people should have access to contraceptive advice if they did decide to be involved in a sexual relationship. Sex education should teach children about the changes that would happen in their bodies as they matured and to take pride in themselves. They had to be taught that the changes they experienced were normal. In spite of the vocal lobby against sex education in schools, Professor Goldman

said he had found in all English-speaking countries that most of the public wanted it. “When you ask the children themselves, they overwhelmingly want sex education programmes within a human relations programme starting in primary school,” he said. It was sensible to allow parents to take their children out of such classes if they wanted, although very few did if they were given the opportunity to be consulted about the content and were sure the subject would be handled sympathetically. “But remember that the kids have rights as well as parents. They have the right to know and the right to be told the truth."