Guilty modesty or simple negligence? In any case, the sexual education given in French establishments is insufficient. At least that’s what SOS Homophobia, AIDSaction and Family Planning said on Wednesday. The three associations have even announced their willingness to attack the State so that it fulfills its duty to inform the young public. Or, more precisely, fully enforce the law.
Thus, a 2001 law establishes that “at least three sessions per homogeneous age group” are organized “annually in French” schools, colleges and secondary schools. However, according to an Ifop survey commissioned by these three organizations, we would be Far from it, with 17% of young people between the ages of 15 and 24 stating that they were never told about sexuality during their schooling, only a third of the remaining 83% affirm, instead, that they have received these three lessons a year.
The treatment of this essential issue is increasingly uneven in the different educational systems. BFMTV.com reviews this Thursday how sex education is taught abroad.
crucial issues
If the issue is crucial, it is because it raises vital questions regarding mentalities and public health. The profile of the three associations that have decided to sue the French State -SOS Homophobia, Sidaction and Family Planning therefore- demonstrates this: it is as much about raising awareness among young people about different sexualities as about the risks that misinformation entails when Starting your sex life. The most important, of course, are HIV and early and unwanted pregnancies.
In a world where, according to UNAIDS, 54% of people living with HIV in 2021 were women or girls, 4,900 of them, aged 15-24, contracted it every week of the same year. More generally, according to this 2021 United Nations document based on 2019 figures, around five million young people were living with the virus worldwide (out of a total population estimated in 2021 at 38 million people affected).
As for early pregnancies, the WHO established the number of women between the ages of 15 and 19 who become pregnant each year at 21 million in 2022, for 50% of unwanted pregnancies. Unicef also noted that 14% of girls under the age of 18 had given birth in 2021.
It goes without saying that all female populations are not equal when it comes to these impromptu pregnancies. In fact, as this infographic from UNICEF shows, where there are 180 births among 1,000 adolescent girls aged 15-19 in Mozambique, there are only 2 in Norway and 3 in the Netherlands or Sweden that boast the lowest rate.
It is four times less than in the UK, for example, where the figure rises to 11 and is still much lower than in France where it is 8. These statistics owe nothing to chance: in Scandinavia, very early on, we took care to inform young people about sexuality.
nordic prism
Norway, Sweden and the Netherlands base this teaching both on their network of schools and on programs aimed at young people. For example, in Norway, children between the ages of 8 and 12 watch a series of self-explanatory educational videos. Paternalan information site dedicated to parenthood – called puberty.
The process is similar in Sweden, although it is aimed at a younger audience and with more lightness. The little ones can thus discover the things of love through the fun program. snoppen and snippan – the first being the equivalent of “zizi”, the second of “zézette”. These short sung videos are included in the children’s program bacillakutenpoints out the British site Metro.
Finally, as far as the Netherlands is concerned, the New York Magazine praised Dutch liberalism in this area: a week is devoted to a very indirect introduction to the teaching of sexuality, illustrated in particular by videos showing the puppies’ tenderness for one another.
united states divided
America prefers to wait until high school, and high school rather than college in general, to talk about sexuality in front of students. This panorama still has many nuances in this federal country. The local Family Planning recalls that 40 states (including the District of Columbia) have made sex education mandatory.
If, therefore, the coverage of the territory is not complete, the question becomes even more complex regarding the autonomy of the establishments at this point. In fact, the time allocated to such a course is left to the discretion of the academies.
“Although almost every state has a roadmap for how and when to provide sex education, the decisions often fall to school districts, creating a patchwork of inconsistent policies and practices within them,” he says.
Even the Guttmacher Institute postulates -according to its study published in February 2022- that sex education declined in the United States between 1995 and the period 2015-2019. Only 50% of adolescents have received sexual education as recommended by the authorities. Worse still, it is often too late: only 43% of adolescent girls and 47% of adolescent boys say they received it before they made love for the first time.
China is reviewing its copy
China has also postponed the deadline for a long time. It must be said that the official communism of the regime is sometimes associated there with a form of puritanism, and the sexuality displayed can be associated with Western capitalism. We also recall that in 2015, the State-Party had criticized the “anti-socialist” behavior of the authors of a sex tape at a Uniqlo store in Beijing.
In this context, it is not surprising that National Education has been silent for a long time on the subject. In 2015, Chinese Family Planning, quoted by independent media spokesHe estimated the portion of the panel of 20,000 college students questioned in his survey to have had the opportunity to learn more about sex beforehand at 10%.
However, from June 1, 2021 and the entry into force of the plan Healthy China 2030 (which can be translated as “A Healthy China by 2030”), sex education classes have been officially integrated into school curricula.
The African continent wonders
In a continent as vast as Africa, crossed by such diverse political histories, cultural and religious traditions, the relationship with sexuality and its teaching to young people is also subject to many variations. If the institutions still tend to put the discussion under lock and key, the situation is changing according to this specialist from the American think tank of the Wilson Center.
Thus, while Nigeria sidelines the issue – apart from small-scale programmes – and Uganda is content to advocate abstinence, 21 governments – mainly concentrated in eastern and southern Africa – have vowed to introduce sex education in their country, From 2013.
Unfortunately, intentions sometimes fall short and, in 2020, the Ivory Coast was the only one to fully implement the UN recommended precepts in this area.
Source: BFM TV
