File on 4: sex education - too much too young? R4 9th May 23

One can get the impression that the more safeguarding breaches there are, the more some are arguing that that means that safeguading must be relaxed. An example being that if some children in a cohort are exposed to extreme online pornography, then the entire cohort needs to be instructed about all kinds of sexual practices.

It doesn't take much imagination to see how that could operate as a feedback loop.

@MightyEagle "When I was at school in the 90s,the whole purpose was pregnancy prevention and std awareness. There was a lot of evidence that fairly frank sex ed before the age of 16 "worked" in those respects."

That is a really good point, MightyEagle.
Good data from studies showing that frank sex education for under 16s reduces rates of teen pregnancy and HIV transmission is being used to argue that evidence based practice is to speak frankly to under 16s about all sorts of sexual practices.

There is another thread with a link to the Parliamentary meeting about it.

The glaring omission was "are bad things going on and if so what can we say about that?" and instead the focus was "the wrong people are saying that bad things are going on so our focus must be to talk to the right people to be reassured and not to think about the bad things".

You can imagine a similar programme having been made about the Rotherham grooming scandal a decade or two back.

How about the BBC reflect the 'perceptions' of parents? Outside sex ed providers such as the SSE seem to see parents as the enemy and that's a massive great big clanging red flag right there.

It makes me very angry the adults who should be bloody adulting who are throwing up their hands 'oh they see all this stuff so we have to teach it to them 'in context' too'.

Well MY kids aren't seeing it, I know for a fact, and the statistics on porn, though horrific, still show that MORE children are NOT seeing it than ARE seeing it. How on earth is it ok to abuse all children by exposing them to this stuff when the majority of them will not have known about it before? And you can talk about 'porn is bad, it's not realistic' quite effectively without needing to get kids to make playdoh models of vulvas or to recreate dick pics - in the process traumatising the girls who haven't already received these and retraumatising those who have as well as just putting ALL the girls in a horrendously traumatic forced situation they cannot get out of without adult levels of assertiveness, which they obviously won't have. Where are the responsible adults?

It's so anti-safeguarding it's unreal - it quite clearly breaches the definition of child abuse in KCSIE which is supposed to be statutory safeguarding document for schools - child abuse includes exposing children to inappropriate adult sexual content. Getting kids to draw dick pics - as SSE did - clearly fits within this definition. Why are heads not rolling over the dick pic stuff?

The BBC is such a lost cause these days, their idea of balance resembles a see saw with an elephant on one end and a pea on the other.

nauticant · Today 20:35
Now a gender critical person does say that "gender identity" is unsubstantiated.

Dr Sophie King-Hill responds that the more we talk about LGBT (she means gender identity), the better the outcomes are. Not challenged

Yes, though the subject at that juncture was about teaching gender identity, she answered by bringing up the plight of potentially lesbian and gay children if you don’t teach them “LGBTQ+“. It was the usual forced teaming of contradictory things so as to slip the T in there as though it were vital.
On the contrary, muddling potentially gay children into thinking they are transgender is a known danger, but bo one mentioned this.

I think the person criticising Miriam Gates, and pretending to mark her report as homework, said it should take more account of other people’s perceptions. How is that a discussion based on evidence really? But I hope she will say why she wouldn’t be part of the programme.

It was rather heartbreaking and touching at the end when one boy said they were the generation who knew too much too soon from the internet, and maybe they would be able to use their experience to help protect the next generation from this. (My words based on my memory of what he said.)

The one thing they could substantiate was that Cates refused to appear on the programme.

Hopefully Miriam Cates will put out a statement explaining why she couldn't take part in the programme.

Regarding gender identity specifically: I haven't seen it yet but from the comments above, it sounds like it came from a position of bias where gender identity is presented as "fact" rather than "belief".

If, for example, there was a programme which advocated that creationism should be taught in schools as fact, I'd expect some decent investigative journalism. Firstly to understand why it was being put forward as a valid approach to underpin schools' curriculums and secondly to investigate both sides of the argument as to whether or not that should happen. Sadly, if you start from a position where a belief has become a fact, there is very little room to go after that.

I should probably reserve these comments for after having watched it to be fair. I'll watch it on catch-up and see if my gut reaction holds true or not.

The narrative they've gone for is that if you can identify government failures then everyone is probably doing their best in spite of the resultant difficulties and so there's nothing to be gained in critically examining what they're doing. But that doesn't go for media and politicians on the Right because they'll be stirring things up with scaremongering.

What we want from sex ed is changing rapidly. When I was at school in the 90s,the whole purpose was pregnancy prevention and std awareness. There was a lot of evidence that fairly frank sex ed before the age of 16 "worked" in those respects.

I'm very dubious about the huge push to remove the "shame" from sex ed (context: I'm a teacher, we've had school of sexuality education in). I've never in 20 years heard any teacher mention shame in the context of sex ed. Neutral is enough, sex positive messages from adults to children are inappropriate and potentially dangerous.

Overall:
Teachers are trying their best.
The sex educators know best.
The claims of the critics are unsubstantiated.
The more you tell children the better.
It's the governments fault for not providing the guidance and the resources.

Thank you. I'll have a listen.

Now a gender critical person does say that "gender identity" is unsubstantiated.

Dr Sophie King-Hill responds that the more we talk about LGBT (she means gender identity), the better the outcomes are. Not challenged.

An unsubstantiated hit-job on the Cates report. The one thing they could substantiate was that Cates refused to appear on the programme.

Gender identity referred to. Unsurprisingly this concept isn't challenged.

The GenderBread Person. Reporter suddenly becomes uncritical.

I heard the start of this on way home from work and will listen properly tomorrow but was concerned after the first 10mins it was going to be a ‘nothing to see here’ job.

Now gender.

Back to best practice to show there's nothing to worry about followed up with some "it never happens".

Sex educator now on saying that there should be no limits on age appropriateness because children will find stuff and not to put it into context is the most harmful thing to do.

Oh good, cross post ..glad SSA are on. People who understand safeguarding