AIBU to think teachers should not be teaching sex games to children?

[2fallsagain]

Article In today's Times about teaching resources for RSE from the proud trust.

www.thetimes.co.uk/article/government-gives-pupils-sex-advice-on-the-roll-of-a-dice-80hmsplws

In summary "The government has funded a tool kit written by the Proud Trust, an LGBT charity, which includes dice featuring words such as “anus”, “vulva”, “penis” and “hands and fingers”. Children are encouraged to throw the dice twice and talk about the sexual acts that can happen using the two body parts".

AIBU to think this is deeply inappropriate and any school using Proud Trust resources needs investigating? WTF is the government doing funding pornographic material for children?

If the article is true, I think it is poorly thought out (at best)

"A penis isn't. But asking teenagers to suggest how a penis and another body part might be used together for sexual gratification definitely is."

Em....what?! Sex is not porn, sexual pleasure is a fact of life and learning about what constitutes sex and what things are is very important for deeper understanding of relationships and consent. If you think talking about a penis or a vagina is porn that is worrying.

It's for secondary school pupils (over 13). I see no issue with it. To call it grooming is hysterical nonsense. Unfortunately no, people protesting are not hysterical silly people. And grooming is exactly this, adults or people in a position of power introducing sexual acts that a child may not feel comfortable talking about, in a way that makes it difficult for them not to normalise it or talk about. It isn’t to say that a teacher delivering the dice game is a sexual predator, but it is to say that a child of 13 who is vulnerable, or already being groomed, like say to talk about anal sex as if it is okay and normal, breaking down her naturally healthy boundaries.

Grooming is boundary breaking, which is why good sex education would only introduce say the concept of anal sex with talk about consent and being able to say. That is why it is so important that sex Ed is evidence based including safeguarding as a priority, as joe public wouldn’t necessarily realize the dice game could reinforce abuse.

Being able to say No - that should have said!

@SquidwardTortellini95

It's for secondary school pupils (over 13). I see no issue with it. To call it grooming is hysterical nonsense.

Never a good idea to tell an audience of (mostly) women that they are being hysterical. Many of us are concerned for the young people being "taught" about sex in a way that normalises a range of acts that even adult women can find unpleasant, and in a way that completely ignores boundaries and the sexual pleasure and fulfilment of women. The fact that they are secondary school children is irrelevant. 13/14/15 is still young and many posters have said how upset they would have been if required to take part in this lesson when they were young teenagers.

I’d feel upset now to be honest! Being told that sex is ‘what sticks in where’. However I’m a confident mature woman, and I would be able to articulate myself about sex, what I thought was pleasurable, and I’d also be able to say that I was very worried about boys and girls being taught that it was normal to have anal sex, to ‘stick objects’ wherever, as if everything is okay and fine. Many of these practices carry considerable risks, and are also more often done in abusive situations.

I am also concerned about young boys, I have a teenage son. I have already had to have a frank chat with him about sexual practices and not assuming that ‘any sex is good sex’. Boys as much as girls, are unwittingly internalising adult porn type views that things like anal are totally normal and good - and probably including it in their first sexual try outs with girls - thinking they are being good at sex.

To all the posters saying 'trust the teachers!'- why aren't you listening to the many, many teachers on this thread who are saying that they actually are not well placed to make these decisions? When I was teaching, I would have needed knowledge of the developing sexualities of all the children in my class to make a decision about using a particular resource. No teacher should have this knowledge- if they do, something is seriously wrong. This is why teachers need to be able to rely on an evidence-based sex education curriculum developed by experts.

Many people delivering sex education have no expertise, although many have become skilled through the experience over the years- you definitely get better at teaching sex Ed the more you do it like anything else. But we don't get the training that would be necessary for us to make informed decisions on the behalf of the children we teach that could have serious consequences.

It's sensible to say that more training for teachers in this area is needed- but this training needs to be from actual child development and sexual health experts, not just any organisation that wants to have a bash at making educational materials for children. Adults can critically evaluate what they are told/read, many children can't. We wouldn't accept educational materials written by unqualified people for any other subject, why this? I would argue that delivering sex education is one of the most important jobs we do as educators at a time when children are under unprecedented pressure from porn etc. It's a grave responsibility. Developing sex Ed materials doesn't require a 'sense of humour'- it requires a bloody sense of responsibility.

PersistentWoman

I neither explicitly said nor implied that the FPA would endorse the game, rather I indicated that there was a course available for parents who do not feel confident to gather up to date information to share with THEIR children at a time they choose to or in response to children’s questions. It is a course that people choose to come on and the response I have had back is that parents feel much more confident on the subject and able to talk to their children openly without cringing. You will notice they I use the term parents not women at no time did I imply that women or men were incapable of doing this, it is a support for those wishing to avail themselves of it.

So Pride have so far disseminated materials with the tag line "love has no age limit", a story about a six (?) year old performing oral sex, and now a dice game about combining random, disembodied body parts (including those only utilised in a sexual manner by niche, minority groups, while totally omitting the main (physical) body part responsible for orgasm in women) and people protesting are prudes, hysterical and morons??

If Pride equally consulted and represented lesbian and hi women why would the clitoris be missing from.theor materials?

Do it's basically a group representing gay, bi and trans men .. but they're supposed to be qualified to supply sex education teaching materials for our young women (and heterosexual young men for that matter). Well, children actually since they're below the age of consent and voting age.

Even if they were only supplying SE teaching materials for young men identifying as gay, bi or trans I'd be concerned about their materials.

After the under ten performing oral sex material this group should have been jettisoned to the far side of the universe or at the very least investigated .. but here we have women (?) calling others morons, prudes and hysterical for questioning the use of their teaching materials in our schools.

How are they still bypassing safeguarding??

This needs to be in the press, and political/legal action needs to be taken.

*bi women

@Reubenshat

Where is your personal cut off then. What do you think children should learn in sex education

I think sex Ed should be taught separately as boys and girls will process the information differently.

I think I’d go in to the class room and say to the girls ‘Don’t have sex whilst you in school - you will get called slag/slut/easy and it’s likely to really mess you up and effect your studies - don’t fool yourself you will marry this lad, he will probably dump you for your best mate’

Then I’d go in to the boys and say ‘stay of porn, it’s not real, you will not look like a porn star. Your likely to have some dad banging on your door - just focus on sports and wanking’

• obviously in RL I wouldn’t but I’m fed up with kids having to be fully equipped to have a full and varied sex life at 13. Plus I’ve not had coffee yet!

What she said.

DaveProdrick

So you’ve come on a thread about a different resource, said nothing really about the game in question, not replied properly to anyone here, just come on to patronise women and advertise your own programme.

Ok.

*It's sensible to say that more training for teachers in this area is needed- but this training needs to be from actual child development and sexual health experts, not just any organisation that wants to have a bash at making educational materials for children. Adults can critically evaluate what they are told/read, many children can't.

We wouldn't accept educational materials written by unqualified people for any other subject, why this? I would argue that delivering sex education is one of the most important jobs we do as educators at a time when children are under unprecedented pressure from porn etc.*

This x 100.

Why are organisations supplying sex education materials not being independently assessed and vetted?

Representing a minority group does not qualify them for developing teaching materials.

Do people still really think that grooming means some shady dude hanging around outside schools and trying to get the girls to get in his Ford Escort?
It's not, it's as a PP said up thread, a concentrated campaign to loosen and eventually break the boundaries of not just children but the adults who are supposed to be protecting them.
And does anyone really care if they are called a prude? I don't. Maybe it's the fact that I have not led a particularly sheltered or "safe" life that I can see this schools material for what it is. And maybe we don't all have an innate trust in authority. In the last few years there has been a drip-drip-drip of normalising porn, normalising child abuse, normalising the dismantling of children's boundaries.

not just any organisation that wants to have a bash at making educational materials for children.

Especially an organisation that has an agenda to represent and normalise their minority views and practices.

Also organisations who have previously presented materials discussing child sex abuse neutrally;

"One passage reads: “From six up, I used to kiss other guys in my neighborhood, make out with them, and perform oral sex on them. I liked it. I used to love oral.”".

Yeah the guys that included this in their "diversity" pack for Asda (alongside the slogan "love has no age limit" should definitely be supplying sex education materials for our kids

How very prudish and moronic and hysterical of me to think so.

I think it's so telling that, as far as I can see, there are no named individuals that wrote this scheme of work. If I'm using a published scheme of work for teaching maths, I can see who wrote it and look them up if I want to so that I can see they have expertise in their subject area and are qualified to make appropriate resources. I could also use schemes of work written by other teachers with expertise. If nobody is happy to take individual responsibility for producing this stuff, that says to me that there's a reason they don't want to put their name to it!

Absolutely agree with you GilbertMarkham. That is a shocking excerpt and another example of an organisation that has no educational expertise (ASDA!) weighing in. Why on Earth is this Asda's remit?

Rainbow pride stuff. All the corporates are all over it. All signing up to be Stonewall Diversity Employers and plastering rainbows all over everything.

Sounds lovely in the board room. But no one has mentioned:

Stonewall sending bearded persons into schools to tell the girls they are a lesbian and if they girls don’t think so then the girls are bigots

Stonewall campaigning to make single sex changing rooms illegal

Stonewall campaigning for males to be allowed to play rugby in women’s teams

Proud Trust coming out with this crap and ‘ Love has no age limit’ and promoting the book about the 7 year old doing oral. That was in a home education pack by the way - so no teacher, well trained or not, able to intervene.

They are all at it. We need the corporates to wake up.

@shreddednips

I think it's so telling that, as far as I can see, there are no named individuals that wrote this scheme of work. If I'm using a published scheme of work for teaching maths, I can see who wrote it and look them up if I want to so that I can see they have expertise in their subject area and are qualified to make appropriate resources. I could also use schemes of work written by other teachers with expertise. If nobody is happy to take individual responsibility for producing this stuff, that says to me that there's a reason they don't want to put their name to it!

This. If they are so proud of their work and have nothing to hide then they would put their name/s to it so we could all look them up and see that they have the expertise necessary to write these materials.

The people behind this will be as dodgy as fuck; guaranteed.

Milly Molly Farmer

It what way is the term ‘parents’ patronising to only women? There was plenty of discussion about the game another paragraph either way would not have added to the debate. I was not ‘advertising’ my course it’s free so no financial gain to be had, I was merely showing that there are alternatives out there for parents wishing to get up to date information with which to challenge the school with if that is there wish. Information is power, and the fact that you found the term parents as patronising to women says more about you than it does me.

@GilbertMarkham

So Pride have so far disseminated materials with the tag line "love has no age limit", a story about a six (?) year old performing oral sex, and now a dice game about combining random, disembodied body parts (including those only utilised in a sexual manner by niche, minority groups, while totally omitting the main (physical) body part responsible for orgasm in women) and people protesting are prudes, hysterical and morons??

If Pride equally consulted and represented lesbian and hi women why would the clitoris be missing from.theor materials?

Do it's basically a group representing gay, bi and trans men .. but they're supposed to be qualified to supply sex education teaching materials for our young women (and heterosexual young men for that matter). Well, children actually since they're below the age of consent and voting age.

Even if they were only supplying SE teaching materials for young men identifying as gay, bi or trans I'd be concerned about their materials.

After the under ten performing oral sex material this group should have been jettisoned to the far side of the universe or at the very least investigated .. but here we have women (?) calling others morons, prudes and hysterical for questioning the use of their teaching materials in our schools.

How are they still bypassing safeguarding??

This needs to be in the press, and political/legal action needs to be taken.

Yep.

So how do we get this in the press?

It’s been in the times.

Baroness Nicholson has been writing to DOE

She got a brush off. She will persist

What response did she get from Gavin Williamson ?

Pleased to see this getting such prominence in the Times.
Share token here:
www.thetimes.co.uk/article/92d62c6e-ead9-11ea-8446-c5c69e8507b4?shareToken=2148983cc6d4d41d4f7f6715fda4f041