Word: unesco
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...guidelines, which UNESCO is still preparing, recommend that national governments, education ministries and school systems around the world provide students with more sex education at an earlier age than what they usually get now. As they mature, students would get more detailed information about avoiding pregnancy and disease. The goal is simple: with contraception often not an option in many parts of the world - and vaccines to prevent diseases like AIDS still unavailable - UNESCO hopes that teaching children more about the risks of sexual activity will help them steer clear of such perils. The organization believes this could...
...handful of conservative U.S. news pundits have been denouncing the guidelines since late August, when they snapped up the online version of the UNESCO working document. The biggest issue for critics is the recommendation that educators begin teaching students introductory reproductive and sexual subjects earlier than usual: from the ages of 5 to 8. More detailed information would then be taught to kids ages 9 to 12. For kids ages 12 to 15, UNESCO recommends that students be instructed about contraception and the differences between "safe abortion and post-abortion care" and the potentially life-threatening forms of improvised pregnancy...
...Given their hostility to abortion and their insistence that abstinence is the only legitimate way of avoiding pregnancy and sexually transmitted diseases, it isn't surprising that some American conservative and Evangelical groups have reacted angrily to the UNESCO document. "U.N. Report Advocates Teaching Masturbation to 5-Year-Olds" read the headline of FoxNews.com's Aug. 26 story. "New UNESCO Sex Education Guidelines Call on Children to Promote Abortions," a LifeNews.com article announced on Sept. 1, the same day conservative news site CNSNews.com warned that "U.S. Funds U.N. Group That Supports Teaching 5-to-8-Year Olds about Masturbation...
...that focus and the wider conservative reaction to the UNESCO document seem to reflect a similar strategy to the one employed to fight President Barack Obama's proposed health-care reform. First, critics have launched the debate before UNESCO has even finished its recommendations, which are based on analysis of 80 different studies of sex-education programs. Second, they have broadcast sensational accusations of the offending proposal's intent to better grab the attention of - and alarm - the public. (See pictures of the health-care debate turning angry...
...This isn't about teaching 5-year-olds how to masturbate, but rather providing young people with better information about themselves and how they can avoid trouble and danger," says Sue Williams, chief of UNESCO's press-relations department in Paris. "We're not surprised by this reaction, nor the places it's coming from. In fact, our very goal with such recommendations is to initiate the kind of debate, reflection and action that moves the topic forward. Our desire now, however, is that the debate be both informed and balanced...