A pamphlet on sex education prepared on the instructions of the Education Committee of London County Council will come before the committee on Wednesday with a recommendation that the notes be distributed to the chairmen of managing and governing bodies and head teachers of London schools and published and placed on sale.
It is emphasized that the pamphlet is in no sense a direction for action, but rather an invitation to teachers to think over the problem so that they may decide for their own schools in what ways sex education can best find its right unobtrusive place in the whole context of education.
The term sex education is convenient, it is stated, but it is undesirable that this element in education for living should be isolated under any such title. It is not a matter for special courses or, as a rule, for visiting lecturers or for any one member of a school staff. When a school has decided what it can usefully and wisely do, it will be desirable to talk the matter over with parents, as it is one for mutual understanding and cooperation.
MATTER-OF-FACT ATTITUDE
It is suggested that in nursery and infants' schools teachers should be ready to answer questions briefly and in the matter-of-fact way in which children ask them. In junior schools the keeping of pets will provoke further questions and nature study lessons will provide some opportunities for a more direct approach to the facts of reproduction.
A matter-of-fact attitude in the teacher might do much to encourage it in the children, the pamphlet states, but if the teaching is carried too far and too fast some children may suffer undesirable shocks or have their interest in the subject accelerated unnecessarily.
The wise teacher will bear in mind that, however factual he makes his instruction, there is in every home a fixed code of beliefs and attitudes tinged with strong emotions and not easily altered. Words which he may find can be used freely in the classroom may not be acceptable in the home, and unless he is careful his pupils may shock their parents by what they say, thereby producing undesirable tensions between parent and child, to say nothing of tension between parent and school.
.lcCaution prevailed in this new pamphlet on sex education which did not advise on any course of action to take but was merely "an invitation for teachers to think over the problem". The use of animal and plant reproduction in biology classes to allude to human sexual activity saved any embarrassment in class and raised the issues in purely technical and impersonal terms. This method was at the expense of those who might completely miss the point.
