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When ignorance isn't bliss...
Tuesday 19 October 2010
Categories: Drugs and Alcohol, Education, Growing up, Personal Safety, Sexual Relationships
The rather sensational headline in a recent Daily Mail online article read: ‘Pupils to learn about rape and laws of consent in bid to cut violent crime’. The story went on to explain that the ‘lessons about rape and drunken sex’ are proposed by the Mayor of London, Boris Johnson, in an attempt to reduce the rate of violent crime in the city. They would be part of the Personal, Social and Health Education programme.
Critics of the scheme, such as Margaret Morrissey, founder of the lobby group Parents Outloud, said that young people are bombarded with messages about sex and drugs, and this can be counterproductive and can even increase the incidences of the behaviour teachers are trying to prevent.
I don’t agree. After thirty years in teaching, the last ten of which were as a Head, I am convinced that in terms of sex and drugs education, the most dangerous thing of all is ignorance or lack of awareness of the consequences of your actions. Of course all such lessons have to be age-appropriate, but teaching both boys and girls about the importance of sex being consensual and not coerced or forced seems to me to be crucial. Similarly, both boys and girls in their teenage years need to be taught about the dangers of excessive drink impeding judgement and leading to unacceptable risk in terms of sexual behaviour. The idea that by talking about such things we increase their likelihood seems to me to be naive.
We cannot always protect our children from such realities, so we have to be able to educate them. This isn’t sensational. It’s common sense.
I couldn’t agree more with Jill Berry and less with Margaret Morrissey. As the mother of a daughter who was sexually assaulted when she was 14 (with devastating results on her mental health) and whose school, overall, failed to give her the level of support she deserved as she tried to carry on with her life and get her GCSEs, I firmly believe that ALL schools, be they private or state schools, single-sex or mixed, should have compulsory rape awareness education for teenagers. I also believe that this should be particularly reinforced in private all-girls schools, where, in my experience, people look at you as if you are from another planet if you so much as mention such things that ‘couldn’t possibly’ happen in such privileged lives. Not surprising then, that they have no real structure for dealing with it when the worst does happen. Big reality check needed here. We live in a world where we are all bombarded with messages about all sorts of things we would rather not have to think about, but doing an ‘ostrich routine’ does nobody any favours and schools have a duty to inform and protect. No, we can’t always protect our children from such realities, as I know to my cost and regret every day of my life – and not only do we need to educate them, we also need to be able to support them and schools should play a part in both. I was horrified to find that this does not always happen.