When I was at school, we had sex education. We were taught about the woman's cycle, about conception, about how contraceptives worked, about a variety of sexual practices, about certain health risks associated with these practices and how they might be mitigated. I'm all in favour of kids of, say, 11, 12, 13 learning about the woman's cycle and conception and contraceptives, and, say, those of 14, 15, 16 learning about the sexual practices and the health risks.
But current proposals, which were all over the news this morning, seem to be about something else. For David Laws tells us that proposals to permit faith schools to teach sex education classes in their own way raise the issue of whether "in the 21st century, are we going to have a school system which is going to be tolerant of intolerance in the name of religious freedom?...Or should we say in the 21st century that it is right that all state-funded schools should be teaching tolerance and respect for diversity."
So on David Laws account, the purpose of sex education is not to provide the mechanical sort of knowledge that I was offered at school, but rather something ethical.
This seemed odd to me, so I checked a little further, and it appears he's right. For even with the amendment the faith schools, if the Daily Mail is to believed (a sometimes dangerous assumption, I know), "will be required to teach pupils about abortion in a 'non-judgmental way' and tell them about a range of contraception options even though their faith may not condone sex before marriage, it emerged.
They will also be required to teach pupils the importance of stable relationships including civil partnerships."
I have to say I'm not sure what a "non-judgemental" ethical discussion of abortion would be. How do we imagine the discussion going in a Catholic school, for example: "As you know, life begins at the moment of conception and a foetus is a full person. In an abortion, this full person, loved by God but helpless and fully dependent upon the sustaining love of its mother, is cut into pieces and then sucked out through a tube, or perhaps poisoned with salt. But we pass no judgement on that." (?)
Is it some odd religious position to think it of interest how one's children are taught sex education? Is it such an odd thing to think one might want one's kids at a school that will teach this in a way one is comfortable with? Here's something that interests me. I suspect that the David Laws of this world would want to teach my children about how "natural" sex is. But lots of things are natural and yet still a concern - and not only to religious people. I don't doubt that it is natural for young women to be interested in dildos. But how happy would you be for your 14 or 15 year old daughter to be taught that the auto-erotic use of dildos is very natural, many young women start at 14 or 15, and she should not feel inhibited from giving it a try if she wants to? (If you don't think you'd be unhappy about that, you are not father to a daughter.)
Again, many things are natural, but wrong. No-one (sane) can doubt that it is perfectly natural for young men to be interested in the idea of having sex with two young women at once. But just because it is natural to want to do that doesn't make it right. Children should not be taught that it follows from the fact that they have natural urges that it is therefore fine if they indulge them. Similarly, many unnatural things are right. It might well be highly unnatural to choose to stay with one's wife even if she becomes old and bad-tempered and sick and loses her mind and fouls herself in her final illness - to stay with her through all that for no better reason than because one promised to do so. That's not natural at all. And perhaps neither is staying with one's wife when one has become infatuated with someone else, just because one promised to. But do we want to teach children that in sexual matters what they should do is go with their natural, healthy urges, and all else is mysticism, repression and hypocrisy?
All of us - not just religious people - have a legitimate interest (and indeed ought to take an interest) in how our children are taught about sex.
Now, as it happens, I believe my own children have no doubt where I stand on many of these matters, so if their teachers taught something that I didn't agree with (as they occasionally do in respect of other subjects - e.g. history) I would probably find out (by quizzing my kids) and then debate the point with them. Indeed, that could even be healthy.
But one of the things about a faith school is that it has a more directive moral ethos. There isn't quite the same expectation that one reconsider ethical guidance offered by the school at home with one's parents. So if a faith school taught you about abortion and didn't say that it was wrong, the kids are liable to learn the lesson that abortion isn't wrong (much more so, indeed, than at another sort of school). Related to this, a faith school might be attempting, consistently, across a range of subjects, to convey the message to its pupils that sexually disciplined lifelong monogamous heterosexual covenant partnerships or the alternative of celibacy are the two sexual lifestyle ideals. How could this be compatible with having the sex education - the most explicit discussion of this point, if driven beyond the mechanical issues I mentioned at the start - be morally neutral on the issue? Or, again, how could the ethos of the school celebrate the sanctity of human life if discussion of why abortion or the use of abortifacient contraceptives such as the Pill or an IUD might be considered wrong is not permitted?
The very least that must be granted is for faith schools to cover only the mechanical issues I mentioned at the start within their "sex education" curriculum, and for them then to have freedom in other parts of the curriculum to cover relationships, murder, and so on in their own ways - otherwise they just aren't faith schools at all!
And for other schools? I don't really see why, given that one is forced to send one's kids to school (it's not as though it's really a choice freely made - home schooling aside) one must accept one's kids being taught all that much stuff one doesn't believe. (A modest amount is inevitable.) And that goes both ways. I know of people that feel very strongly that children are made to feel inhibited about sex and in consequence hate their bodies and miss out on lots of innocent fun. Why should such people's children be forced to sit in classes and be told that sex is best placed within the context of a loving (if impermanent) relationship if their parents actually think that one night stands are fine when you're young?
Mechanical sex education in school is useful. And once the children are old enough - 14, 15, 16 - then having lessons for debates about relationship permanence and other ethical matters should be fine, especially if they are conducted in a spirit of genuine tolerance - in particular, if those with more conservative (or liberal) views than the rest of the class and the teacher are not shouted down and abused, but instead tolerated. But that would require a completely different concept of toleration from anything David Laws (mis-)understands.