Page 7. (in new window)   STOP PRESS Vol.18 No.1
Sex education
long overdue,
says Mrs Ahern
SEX education should have been introduced into Queensland schools 20 years ago, the Premier's wife, Mrs Andrea Ahern, said yesterday.

"I came from Holland and when I was in primary school we had sex education," she said.

"For some reason, we had a bit of a problem here, but not any more."

Mrs Ahern was speaking after launching a Family Planning Association sex education video and discussion package for pre-school and kindergarten children.

She said her five children had begun asking questions about themselves at pre-school age.

"I firmly believe you should start telling children where they come from just as soon as they start asking," Mrs Ahern said.

"You have to give them an honest answer.

"When you don't

     
By education reporter
 SANDRA KILLEN
teach children about themselves that's when they have problems."

Mrs Ahern said the Family Planning Association kit, entitled "Where Do I Start?", was a gentle, sensitive, straightforward introduction to sex education.

"Education about human relationships has to he taught in both the home and the school because they complement each other," she said.

Human relationships courses are now conducted in about 100 pre-school and secondary schools throughout the State.

The association's education director, Sister June Morris, said children whose parents taught them about sex were less likely to be victims of sexual abuse.

The kit, costing $130, is available at the Family Planning Association.

I have highlighted and condemned the contents of "Where Did I Come From" in earlier articles. Telling and showing children how wonderful it feels to be a fornicating pair producing an illegitimate baby will cause them to decide to want to fornicate. How can anyone be so naive as to think otherwise!

A parent told me that "Where Did I Come From" had been reponsible for an early primary school boy, she knows becoming obsessed with sex and a potential danger to neighbouring young girls.

Another parent told me that one video based on this book was shown to her little daughter and a neighbouring young boy. It resulted in his trying on her daughter what the video taught him.

Fancy anyone wanting to foist such dangerous material on to other people's well-brought-up 'children. We object strongly to the classroom

being used for the preaching of the ungodly doctrines and values of the Humanist religion.

Sex education in
schools criticised

SEX education in schools was providing students with indoctrination
 rather than education, a West Australian professor said yesterday.

Professor of Education at Perth's Murdoch University, Professor Brian Hill, said sex education in Australian schools was presenting a one-sided view which encouraged "extreme permissiveness"

"The courses give physical facts. but do not discuss the moral issues and responsibilities involved with sexual behavior in to. day's society," he said.

JANUARY 10, 1983 10, 1983

     By. declining to discuss these issues they are promoting permissiveness and leaving kids at the mercy of people who say sex is an open-go thing."

Professor Murdoch is visiting Brisbane to speak at the 1983 National-Conference of the Australian Fellowship of Evangelical Students, which begins on Friday.

He said teachers had a responsibility to present a more balanced view of sex education to their students.

    
Psychoanalyst and Professor of Education, Bruno Bettelheim, says classroom sex education is a danger and that it is implicated in increases in teenage sex and teenage pregnancies. He says teaching sex as pleasurable and natural (amorally) causes experimentation.

He advocates 'The Frog Prince' and 'Beauty and the Beast' for teaching Huan love and marriage relationships. Parents should tell children only what they want to know.

Bettelheim contradicts the anti-Christian Family Planning Assoc. ('Sunday Sun' 28/5/89) saying it is nonsense to advocate parental nudity or showering together.

Psychology Today July 1981