Nick Seaton of the Campaign for Real Education says Sex and Relationships Education offers too much too soon - schools should focus on teaching children to read.
"As a 14 year-old girl, I have had to attend four talks in the past nine months from a woman from a family planning clinic. I have been taught three times how to put on a condom; how easily pupils can acquire condoms free at a clinic; how to recognise sexually transmitted diseases and have them treated confidentially at a clinic; and that we do not need to tell our parents, GP, the police or anyone else in authority about being provided with contraception, or even having an abortion."
"There was not one mention of abstaining or any discouragement of sex. At the first lesson we were told: 'As you know, it is unlawful for a girl or boy to have sex before 16. However, if you are under 16, we can still provide you with contraception and you do not need to tell your parents about it.'"
This extract from a letter to the Daily Mail from 14-year-old Josie Parkinson describes the Sex and Relationship Education (SRE) she had been receiving at school. Such lessons are now the norm, not the exception, and her letter provides the opening for a recent pamphlet published by the Family Education Trust.
Too much, too soon: the government's plans for your child's sex education by Norman Wells exposes the ideological attack on traditional family values being waged by sex educationists and their allies in the Department for Children, Families and Schools (DCSF) and elsewhere. The pamphlet and other helpful information are available here.
The author notes that: "The past three decades have witnessed a substantial increase in the provision of SRE in both primary and secondary schools and it has never been easier for teenagers to obtain contraception without their parents knowing, yet the UK still has the highest rate of teenage conceptions in Western Europe, and sexually transmitted infection rates have continued to rise."
Also that: "Written answers to parliamentary questions indicate that the DCSF has not commissioned or evaluated research on the impact of SRE on the attitudes and lifestyle choices of young people; neither has it made any assessment of the effectiveness of SRE."
Perhaps you are one of those who believes that ministers and the DCSF should be allowed to introduce anything they like into the school curriculum without any requirement for research into its effects? Perhaps you also think it's the job of schools to promote non-judgmental attitudes and values in areas of personal belief and morality? If so, you are out of touch with responsible parents.
Yet ministers and their allies intend to make politically correct Personal, Social, Health and Economic Education (PSHE), of which SRE is a part, compulsory in all secondary schools. (Economic education is a recent addition.) They also hope to make SRE compulsory in primary schools and remove from parents their statutory right to withdraw their child from SRE, if they don't agree with what is being taught or how.
On Friday 24 July, the government's consultation on these and other changes will end. Those who disagree with attempts to undermine parental responsibility by removing parents' influence over the behaviour of their children are urged to respond to the consultation on PSHE (and perhaps other things) here.
It should be noted that none of the lessons described above by Josie Parkinson could take place in schools without the active co-operation of local councillors and their officials.
Do you know what's going on in the schools in your area? Are you happy for schools to be used for such purposes, when many of them can't even teach their pupils the basics of English, maths, science, geography or history? Does it make sense to allow 'progressive' educationists to destroy childhood? Or should they be cleared out of the system?
