In my twenty-two years of experience I can honestly say I’ve never heard someone talk positively about their sex education experience while at school.
I know that my own sexual education was very heteronormative and simply explained ‘how babies are made.’ After that it was up to us to learn about everything from sexuality, to practicing safe to sex, to different sexual disorders.
According to the HSE in 2017, the number of teenage pregnancies had fallen by 65% over the previous 15 years! Great! However, between 2015 and 2016, the number of STI’s among teenagers had risen by 8.3%! Clearly there is something still wrong in how we are teaching our young people about sex.
I did a quick survey online in which 201 people replied. It was comforting (yet also shocking) to see that 98% of those people agreed that Ireland was in desperate need for a better and more inclusive sex education.
From this, a friend of mine told me a story regarding her younger brother’s sex education. During the class, a child asked the teacher a very valid question, “Is sex different when you’re gay.”
Being 12-13 and not really knowing where you fit in, having feelings that you don’t know how to express, it’s vital that we as educators are open and honest with young people in regards to sex. Instead the class were told that gay people do not have sex at all. And I think that is the real issue here.
It is believed that Ireland is a progressive and inclusive country. But what people forget is that Catholicism is still very present in Ireland today. A lot of the companies that are brought into schools to teach about sex education are often closely associated with the Catholic Church.
It’s difficult to have a more inclusive sex education when young people are being taught by the institutions that often exclude them.
This means that young people have to search somewhere else for their sex education. I know myself, I learned very little about sexuality, practicing safe sex, or about different sexual disorders from school but learned most of it online. Is this the best way to learn about these things? No. Especially not as a young person, who can be impressionable.
With how vast and wide the internet can be, it is possible that they are learning about violent sex, rape, and misogyny without being told that these things are wrong.
So what can be done? Recently I taught consent classes in college to students. I found this worked really well and gave a good insight into consent. Personally, I’d love if these classes were rolled out into secondary schools as well as collages. Equally we need to start having more open and honest conversations about sex and sexuality.
At the end of the day, I think we can all agree that Ireland does need a better and more inclusive sex education. The sooner that this happens, the sooner young people can feel more comfortable about who they are.
It may feel like Ireland is finally coming out of the dark ages and into the twenty-first century. However, it’s clear that we are not there just yet.