The Question of Sex Education
Not Just Any Matter
Now it is New York’s turn: Dennis Walcott, Chancellor of the city’s Department of Education, has mandated that with the new school year students between the ages of 11 and 18 will be required to attend a course in sexual education for at least one semester. The new course is part of an initiative launched by Mayor Bloomberg to improve the lives of black and latino teenagers, saving them from a misery to which they seem destined. To avoid religious controversy, chastity will be cited among birth control methods and teachers will have to speak about sex with some caution. But this is not enough according to Archbishop Timothy Dolan, who criticized the initiative, stating that in this way authorities allow “the public school system to substitute its beliefs and values for those of the parents”.
Once again, we see the repetition of a model already tried by many other countries: the State decides to include compulsory sexual education in schools, and the Catholic Church opposes it, earning the image of an obscurantist force, cruel because of it indifference to the consequences its refusal could have among young people, that is, unwanted pregnancies and disease. However, that is not how things stand.
It is not clear why public institutions in the West continue to have such magical trust in the effectiveness of sex education. After years of courses, focused, of course, on contraceptive methods, we see that – for example in the UK – boys and girls continue to have early sexual intercourse without any kind of protection, and the number of pregnancies and abortions among adolescents has multiplied. By now, it is clear that to avoid these tragedies it is not enough to explain to them how they can use contraceptives, and where to easily find them, but that the problem is further upstream, in education and in the family.
At heart, Italy – where there is no compulsory sex education in schools –is one of the countries which is better off from this point of view: here young people have a lower risk of disease and early pregnancy. This is thanks to the family, to the loving vigilance of parents over their children, to the fact that kids are not left to themselves with a box of contraceptives as the only defense against their passions and mistakes.
And, in part, it is also thanks to the Catholic Church, who continues to teach that sexual relations are much more than some kind of pleasurable exercise to be practiced in an unbridled and risk-free way. In fact, the Church considers the sexual life of human beings to be one of the most meaningful proofs of their human and spiritual maturity, a test to be faced with preparation and seriousness, that is, to be connected to life’s fundamental choices like marriage, and therefore, to the foundation of family in which procreation is one of the principal ends. The Church teaches respect for one’s own body, which means giving importance and weight to the acts that are done with it, not just taking into consideration the possibility of enjoyment or narcissistic gratification: and this is precisely contrary to what those who criticize her say.
In Catholic tradition the body is extremely important, it plays a central role in the human and spiritual life of every person. Catholics, therefore, cannot accept that sexual life become considered a subject for teaching like that of any other activity, setting out a few dangers it would be best to avoid; for, as is well known, young people are often attracted to danger, and will strive to avoid it only if they are educated in the underlying reasons of a different kind of moral behavior.
Of course, for increasingly dysfunctional families it’s very difficult to teach a sexual morality that is not testified to by the parents and or the environment in which children live. So, it seems easier to renounce any kind of moral teaching and leave the problem to schools, which substitute moral education with technical information. If the results are disastrous, you pretend not to know it: it is much easier to ignore the problem, pretend to resolve it with useless, and even harmful, school courses, rather than address the issue which underlies it… that is, the resounding failed utopia of the sexual revolution and subsequent breakdown of the first institution of moral education, the family.
Lucetta Scaraffia
August 31, 2011
Not Just Any Matter
Now it is New York’s turn: Dennis Walcott, Chancellor of the city’s Department of Education, has mandated that with the new school year students between the ages of 11 and 18 will be required to attend a course in sexual education for at least one semester. The new course is part of an initiative launched by Mayor Bloomberg to improve the lives of black and latino teenagers, saving them from a misery to which they seem destined. To avoid religious controversy, chastity will be cited among birth control methods and teachers will have to speak about sex with some caution. But this is not enough according to Archbishop Timothy Dolan, who criticized the initiative, stating that in this way authorities allow “the public school system to substitute its beliefs and values for those of the parents”.
Once again, we see the repetition of a model already tried by many other countries: the State decides to include compulsory sexual education in schools, and the Catholic Church opposes it, earning the image of an obscurantist force, cruel because of it indifference to the consequences its refusal could have among young people, that is, unwanted pregnancies and disease. However, that is not how things stand.
It is not clear why public institutions in the West continue to have such magical trust in the effectiveness of sex education. After years of courses, focused, of course, on contraceptive methods, we see that – for example in the UK – boys and girls continue to have early sexual intercourse without any kind of protection, and the number of pregnancies and abortions among adolescents has multiplied. By now, it is clear that to avoid these tragedies it is not enough to explain to them how they can use contraceptives, and where to easily find them, but that the problem is further upstream, in education and in the family.
At heart, Italy – where there is no compulsory sex education in schools –is one of the countries which is better off from this point of view: here young people have a lower risk of disease and early pregnancy. This is thanks to the family, to the loving vigilance of parents over their children, to the fact that kids are not left to themselves with a box of contraceptives as the only defense against their passions and mistakes.
And, in part, it is also thanks to the Catholic Church, who continues to teach that sexual relations are much more than some kind of pleasurable exercise to be practiced in an unbridled and risk-free way. In fact, the Church considers the sexual life of human beings to be one of the most meaningful proofs of their human and spiritual maturity, a test to be faced with preparation and seriousness, that is, to be connected to life’s fundamental choices like marriage, and therefore, to the foundation of family in which procreation is one of the principal ends. The Church teaches respect for one’s own body, which means giving importance and weight to the acts that are done with it, not just taking into consideration the possibility of enjoyment or narcissistic gratification: and this is precisely contrary to what those who criticize her say.
In Catholic tradition the body is extremely important, it plays a central role in the human and spiritual life of every person. Catholics, therefore, cannot accept that sexual life become considered a subject for teaching like that of any other activity, setting out a few dangers it would be best to avoid; for, as is well known, young people are often attracted to danger, and will strive to avoid it only if they are educated in the underlying reasons of a different kind of moral behavior.
Of course, for increasingly dysfunctional families it’s very difficult to teach a sexual morality that is not testified to by the parents and or the environment in which children live. So, it seems easier to renounce any kind of moral teaching and leave the problem to schools, which substitute moral education with technical information. If the results are disastrous, you pretend not to know it: it is much easier to ignore the problem, pretend to resolve it with useless, and even harmful, school courses, rather than address the issue which underlies it… that is, the resounding failed utopia of the sexual revolution and subsequent breakdown of the first institution of moral education, the family.
Lucetta Scaraffia
August 31, 2011