Comprehensive Sex Education and its Impact on our Children
To begin with, some examples of the new face of sex education. For the target group of 11- to 16-year-olds, the street actions of the Body+Grips Mobile of the German Youth Red Cross are worth mentioning. The young people have to find simple tasks, that they can explore among themselves or in the company of peers, for as short or as long as they want, and in places they visit anyway. The Body+Grips mobile invites the adolescents to find out about the areas of exercise, nutrition, social interaction, sexuality, addiction, body and mind, to perceive content and to actively experiment.
The book Wild Thing – Sex Tips for Boys and Girls by Paul Joannides, for the target group of slightly older teenagers. The book gets right to the theme with casual language. It deals with very concrete topics such as „ball control“ or genital massage. It gives tips on all sexual practices and positions and is also a medical reference book.
For the target group of young adults, the book “Der Sex-Knigge” by Doris Burger is recommended. In the introduction you read as follows: “Are you confident in all love situations? Or do you sometimes feel tormented by questions of style during lovemaking? The sex etiquette guide tells you how to strike the right note from the first touch to the main menu, how to skilfully circumnavigate lust killers and how to humorously iron out a faux pas. There are even tips for a gallant exit, because after all you want to be remembered positively and not show any nakedness.”
In a lecture on sexual education, Dr. Karlheinz Valtl, Senior Lecturer at the University of Vienna, said: „I have a lot of reservations about this book, and yet, I find it exciting how it tries to awaken a new awareness of fairness and of the dignity of others in the face of the vicissitudes of promiscuous life – for example, in the question of how to organize the morning after a one-night stand.“
I do not want to comment on these examples here and leave it up to you, dear reader, whether you find the vicissitudes of promiscuous life also so exciting!
The principles and goals of sexuality education state: Sexuality education is clearly oriented towards gender equality, self-determination, and recognition of diversity. The right to sexual self-determination means that every person can determine their own sexual identity and sexuality. „Your right to sexual self-determination“ gender scholars opine, „leaves you free to decide your own sexual orientation, choice of sexual partners, sexual practices, and the form of sexual relations. Pleasure is based on self-determination of the individual and autonomy within the relationship. This autonomy must be ensured through existing public policies such as sex education, health services, freedom from coercion and violence, and the development of ethics around issues of justice, equality, and freedom. Because pleasure is an essential aspect of sexuality, the right to seek and express pleasure and to decide when to experience pleasure must not be denied to anyone.“ (Sexual Rights: An IPPF Statement, General Principles, Principle 4)
Erich Fromm said very clearly: „Pleasure cannot be a criterion of value, because there are people who feel pleasure in submission and not in freedom, for whom not love but hatred, not productive work but exploitation means pleasure.“
The central dogma of Comprehensive Sex Education is „Sexual Self-Determination.“ The paradigms of self-determination and sexual diversity are proclaimed in society as an inherent right of individuals. The most important question for sexual educators is therefore: What competencies do people need to be able to shape their sexual- and relationship lives in a self-determined way – and what must pedagogy offer so that these competencies can be acquired? This is where the problem of comprehensive sex education begins. Because of their immaturity, children and adolescents often find it difficult to control their feelings and inclinations and to learn from mistakes. Therefore, if only personal and social skills are taught, without a standard of right and wrong, means, teaching a young person how he/she competently can seduce someone. Even many adults who are supposed to be role models of responsibility for the young generation are often experts in seduction, cheating and lying.
Dr. Karlheinz Valtl understands education „as shaping and increasingly self-forming of the person through appropriation of the world. I.e. the person (subject) appropriates the contents of the world (object), while the educators only accompany this process.”
In the traditional understanding of education, the educator is the subject, and the pupil is the object. Thus, the action starts from the educator. Reform pedagogy has reversed the relationship, which at first seems understandable. On closer examination, however, reform pedagogy is a Trojan Horse.
Education, in the words of Dr. Valtl, „places the emphasis on self-determination, even in the way of learning. Education is more focused on the learners‘ own activity, it is learner-centred instead of teacher-centred. Sexual education thus means having more confidence in the individual’s capacity for self-learning and self-direction, including in relation to sexuality.“
Sexuality is not understood as biologically or religiously determined behaviour, but as a historically changing, and socially shaped dimension of human beings, which develops individually, during the whole life. This weird understanding of human beings and human life is the foundation of the CSI Curriculum. This means that every person at any time, can determine for themselves whether they want to be heterosexual, homosexual, bisexual, asexual, transsexual, cis-sexual, metrosexual, sapiosexual, or otherwise sexual. Sexualities are said to be a dime a dozen. For the Sexual Education Platform, the principle of „lust“ is at the top of its scale of values, and thus it promotes selfishness in people, propagates vanity, and idealizes narcissism in all its forms and manifestations.
Sexuality is seen by sex educators as a life energy or resource that is in principle available to everyone and can be consumed at will. A life energy that accompanies, „amuses,“ engages, and feeds everyone from birth.
This definition of sexuality is very superficial and a direct path to unhappiness and destruction because it encourages people to use their sexuality at whim. It assumes, in fact, that man can use this life energy as he pleases and without consequences. But what if a self-determined action leads to undesirable consequences? What if a „cute“ boy hooks up with a girl, has consensual sex with her, the girl then gets pregnant, and he self-determines to get out of the way? Is he then acting responsibly?
When a person consciously or unconsciously misuses this life energy, it leads to bitter disappointment and sorrow, and can spread into a conflagration of hatred. Nowhere else is there so much lying and deception as in sexual matters. Risky sexual behaviours can also lead to a weakening of the body’s defences and, in the final stages, to HIV infection. AIDS (Acquired Immune Deficiency Syndrome), an acquired immune deficiency syndrome, is a disease that causes severe disruptions in the body’s immune system and is usually fatal. STS and AIDS sufferers, however, usually reject their responsibility and their share in the disease and in the relationship shards they have left behind. Sexual education is defined as elementary, for the development of the personality. The emotional, social, sensual, and cognitive powers of children are to be promoted through perception, doing and reflection. In sexual research, children and adolescents are regarded as subjects of their sexual development. There is explicit permission for concrete sexual experiential learning. Children and adolescents should:
a) actively search for sexual and relationship experiences,
b) process the impressions from them with a reasonably „robust“ frustration tolerance,
c) draw personal consequences and
d) thus constructively „crafting“ their sexual identity.
According to Sex Educators, children and adolescents should acquire the following key skills for self-determined learning: solving problems, obtaining information, and selecting what is useful.
Such pedagogical understanding about the elementary formation of children´s personality and adolescents, raises serious questions, because there are several wrong and irresponsible assumptions.
A. By nature, sex occurs between mature people, not between children and those who are responsible for them. If children seek emotional closeness with adults, sexual interaction is highly unlikely. However, when children begin to primarily look to their peers for guidance, the desire for contact can easily become sexualized. Due to „peer pressure,“ many children are pushed into early sexual experiences. As noted, developmental psychologist Gordon Neufeld writes on: „When Sex Comes into Play – adolescent sex is rarely about sex. Sometimes it is about a strong need to feel wanted. It can be an escape from boredom or loneliness. It can also be a way of staking out territory, claiming a possession, or an attempt to form a special relationship with another person. Sex can be a powerful symbol of status and recognition. Sometimes it can be about hooking up with someone, belonging, fitting in, or clinging and holding on to someone. It can be about dominance or submission, or about pleasing someone. Sometimes sex reflects a lack of boundaries and an inability to say NO”.
B. Early sexual experiences and disappointing relationship experiences do not advance children’s development. Children feel rather unsettled and confused. Unhealthy social behaviour’s, such as lying, negative thinking, manipulative actions, etc., have a negative impact on brain development. Emotions influence our moral thinking and actions. There is a big difference between sexual contact as an expression of genuine intimacy and sexual contact as primitive pleasure gratification. The result of the latter form is inevitably unsatisfactory and promotes promiscuity and addiction A 14-year-old boy tells: „Something is wrong! Everything is going fine – I am having lots of sex, but I have probably never really loved in the true sense. My friends all admire me for the kind of girl I can hook up with, but I am not very good at what I guess you would call intimacy, because the morning after, I never know what to say to a girl. In fact, all I want to do then is call my buddies and show off.“ The developmental psychologist Gordon Neufeld said: “Early sexual activity of children is troubling and leads to a devaluing of sexuality”.
C. It is pure cynicism to assume that children and adolescents will simply tolerate and process borderline and hurtful sexual experiences without becoming frustrated and disappointed. More likely, children and young people lose trust in people and their dream and longing for true love is destroyed. Immature sexual experiences and sexual abuse lead to powerlessness, fear, disgust, and bitter disappointment. Contemporary sex educators propagate a culture characterized by a bizarrely perverted, pseudo-advanced, immature sexuality. Young people live out their intimacy physically without having the necessary psychological maturity to cope with the consequences.
D. According to sex educators, „sexual education should also allow selective deepening of topics and thus specialization through the diverse, freely selectable offers“. Children and adolescents should draw personal consequences from their sexual experiences and thus „constructively“ shape their sexual identity. What does that mean in real life? For example, if a 13-year-old girl’s intention is to seduce and win over a boy, she will deepen her sexual competence. She will become an expert at attracting boys‘ attention and affection, and for quickly outdoing competition from other girls. She will take pride in getting boys into bed so easily. After all, the boys are very useful and willing objects. She will repeat and “perfect” her sexual experience with boys and become a specialist in seduction.
Another example is when a 13-year-old girl is pushed to have oral sex at school to „prove“ that she belongs to the clique. She has no sexual interest in the boys, but eventually consents to belong to their clique! Her conscience will probably tell her not to do it! What will she learn from this? After all, she wants to belong to them. If she does it anyway, it will weigh on her conscience. Will that strengthen her personality, or make her insecure and doubt her integrity and identity? Most likely, such a girl will create a justification for her sexual acts, in order not to have to admit her mistakes and repeat them.
The question arises, as to where the dividing line between a good a bad act is? In other words, where does sexual abuse begin? Abuse advocates say, „Sexual abuse or sexual violence against children is any sexual act performed on or in front of girls and boys against their will or to which they cannot knowingly consent because of physical, emotional, mental or linguistic inferiority. Sexual violence begins with sexual assaults such as verbal harassment, voyeuristic appraisal of the child’s body, but also cursory touching of the genital area or breast over clothing“. This is again a very superficial understanding of sexual abuse. Unspoken, only adult abuse of children is addressed here. Immature sexuality and sexual abuse among children and adolescents are simply ignored.
Does abuse arise only when assaults occur, or not much earlier, namely in the mind and heart of man? The preamble of UNESCO says: „Since wars begin in the minds of men, it is in the minds of men that the defences of peace must be constructed„. Doesn’t this also apply to sexuality? Sexual abuse begins in the minds and hearts of men, not at the time of a sexual act. Indeed, a sexual assault or sexual act is already the result of our thoughts. And if the intention of a sexual act is wrong, self-centred, deceitful, and/or deceitful, the actual act can only be wrong, self-centred, or deceitful.
Children and adolescents may have the necessary information about sexuality and can decide for themselves what they like and do, but the question is whether this helps or harms their personal development. Children and adolescents may know what they want, but what matters is what they need! And what they need are role models and secure bonds with their parents, educators, pedagogues, and teachers.
Dr. Valtl states in his paper, „So-called postmodern society sets individuals free to shape themselves, but also leaves them alone to do so, while old meaning-giving myths decay and new forms of manipulation emerge.“ – When will there be an outcry from educators, experts, and parents against this moral destruction of our youth?