Sex educators' level of expertise and a call for community partnerships in sex education

(photo source: Tom Pigeon for Newsweek)

Concern over whether teachers who teach sexualities curriculum are adequately informed enough to assume an ‘expert’ role in the classroom prompted an interesting recent study in the UK. Unfortunately, this survey of 155 sex education teachers in England (94 female, 61 male) suggests that not only do most teachers not have enough knowledge, but only rarely is their teaching in this subject even assessed. Adding to the uneasiness, teachers worry about the possibility of parental complaints, or even worse, litigation. As parents are able to pull their child from sex education at any time, it leaves a residual ambiguity with educators who are unsure about what material must be taught and what is optional.

Assessing sexual health knowledge in this study involved developing a questionnaire designed to measure three components: (i) contraceptive use and methods (i.e. “do you need parental/guardian consent to obtain contraceptives for under 16s/” (ii) sexually transmitted infections (i.e. “can you be unaware that you have a sexually transmitted infection?”) and (iii) about the relationship between contraception and sexually transmitted infections (i.e. “ do all methods of contraception protect you from sexually transmitted infections?” Other parts of the survey listed various medical conditions and asked educators to identify which were STIs, and attempted to measure the level of preparedness teachers felt they had to teach the subject.

Although teachers scored well on general sexual health knowledge, more than half were unable to correctly answer that emergency contraceptive pills are effective for up to three days after unprotected sex, and only 43% could state that the emergency contraception has an effectiveness of 85% if used correctly. Generally speaking, educators do not feel that they have been provided with sufficient information regarding STIs, youth legal rights or contraception. A concerning 73% felt ill-prepared to discuss the availability of local or regional sexual health services that might be available to youth.

Clearly, there is a disconnect between the desired and stated learning goals and outcomes of sexuality curricula, if we are not ensuring that educators are able to teach the material effectively and confidently. Perhaps most telling is that 83% of the teachers involved in the study suggested that they believed that sexualities education should be taught by partnerships involving “teachers, healthcare professionals and other outside agencies” (Westwood & Mullan, 2007, p.151). Providing this scaffolding could radically empower both teachers and youth in the sexualities classroom, and create very different learning opportunities than those that are being quelled through lack of knowledge or confidence.

(source: Westwood, J., & Mullan, B. (2007). Knowledge and attitudes of secondary school teachers regarding sexual health education in England. Sex Education, 7(2), 143-159.)

Text messaging sex ed questions

An innovative partnership between Fiesta Condoms (run by by the DKT Indonesia Foundation, the local chapter of a Washington-based charitable organization) and the Singapore-based multimedia health platform Love Airways launched a free service where people can text-message their questions about sexual health and get a response by a health professional. The hotline is a response to a study that found Indonesian youth were alarmingly unaware of accurate information in regards to sexual health, with almost half of young people getting their sexual knowledge from porn.

The hotline service allows teenagers and anyone with access to a mobile phone from all over Indonesia to send their queries to a panel of Indonesian doctors by text messaging to +65 94 DRLOVE (+65 943 75683) anonymously, allowing plenty of privacy and freedom to enquire about a topic that is largely a social taboo. "All questions are welcome and no question is too outrageous," said founder of Love Airways' "Dr. Love" aka Dr. Wei Siang Yu, who also set up the world's first wireless sex education initiative in Amsterdam, the Netherlands, in 2002. He also pioneered a similar wireless campaign in Singapore, which is said to have received up to 8,000 queries daily. Although not all questions will be able to be answered due to insufficient resources, questions received in the next month will be compiled into a 20,000-point database that will not only help map out the most common questions Indonesians have about sex, but will also be converted into Indonesia's first interactive digital avatar, "Nova", at http://www.loveairways.com/.

Kudos to the organizations in Jakarta for championing this initiative. Too often, studies are conducted time and time again that suggest that young people are not having access to the information that they need to be sexually healthy, and nothing is done. Here in Canada, the Canadian Council of Ministers of Education conducted a massive study in 2003, duplicating one that been done accessing the knowledge of youth in the mid 1980's, and found that almost half of kids in grade 9 thought that HIV/AIDS is curable, and that the number of youth having unprotected sex had risen substantially. Sadly, four years later, the government has not responded in any proactive or urgent way to the study's findings, which have largely been shelved and educational activism around sexual health has been left primarily to activist agencies and organizations who pick up the cause.

(source: The Jakarta Post, July 19, 2007)

Brazil's Commitment to Sexual Health

(photo by Andy Caulfield)

The Christ over Rio de Janeiro is showing profoundly more compassion for the people of Brazil than Pope Benedict has of late, but thankfully, the government of Brazil is doing a much better job. Brazil joins other progressive mostly Catholic countries in developing a plan to promote sexual health in its citizens : it has handed out more than 250 million free condoms, and just announced that it will provide birth control at 10,000 pharmacies across the country for only $2.40 a year. It already provides a limited number of free vasectomies, and will be increasing the number substantially as well. The Pope has publically spoken out against the move by Brazil and other countries that are following suit.

As Marty Klein over at Sexual Intelligence notes: "Increased access to contraception invariably enhances everyone's health, lowers infant mortality, increases lifespans, and raises incomes. " It's time for the church to recognize the harm it is inflicting on people's lives with its rigid, outdated and dangerous social policy in regards to sexuality and reproduction.

Brazil has 21.2 million people between 12 and 18 years of age, representing 12.5 percent of its 174 million inhabitants, according to A Voz dos Adolescentes (The Voice of Adolescents), a report by the United Nations Children's Fund (UNICEF). Clearly specific strategies need to be adapted to address the needs of this population, and this is an important step in creating a sexually healthy population.

"Breakfast"

An award-winning ad by Belgium condom makers, Zazoo ,another innovative and nicely done creative advertising campaign using wit and humour to get people thinking about sexual and reproductive health.