Should teenagers be taught about safe sex or should they abstain - and possibly end up having unprotected sex? Róisín Inglehears their views 'I might not need to use trigonometry again but I will always want to know how to avoid getting an STI'
At the first Irish Young Decision Makers conference in Dublin this week, Co Donegal teenager Josephine McConigley listened closely to the results of recent research carried out on the Relationship and Sexual Education (RSE) programme which has been compulsory in Irish schools for the past 10 years.
The research, co-authored by Dr Paula Mayock of the Children's Research Centre at Trinity College Dublin, was released last February and showed that 90 per cent of schools covered the RSE programme to some extent. But this figure, the conference heard, masks what can only be described as a patchy implementation of the programme in schools.
McConigley heard about those teachers who are too embarrassed to inform young people about issues such as contraception, sexually transmitted diseases or sexual orientation. She heard how the research highlighted the lack of training for teachers in this area and the limited resources made available to them. She heard how around 40 per cent of schools do not have a written statement outlining their RSE policy, another compulsory element of the programme.
McConigley also heard the views of her fellow delegates, young people clearly desperate for more information about sexual and reproductive health issues and frustrated as to why their needs are not being met through the school system. "It's about life skills," as one young female delegate put it. "I might not need to use trigonometry again but I will always want to know how to avoid getting a sexually transmitted infection (STI). I don't want to sound dramatic, but this is about preventing death and disease."
FOR HER PART, McConigley is already aware, on a personal level, of the importance of the full implementation of the RSE programme which, according to the TCD research, commissioned by the Crisis Pregnancy Agency, is still not taught consistently in many schools. Her own sex education consisted of being taken out of biology class with other girls in first and second year, and being given an information pack. "It was about periods and I think there was a diagram of the penis and the vagina. We were given the packs with a tampon and a sanitary towel and told not to tell the boys in our class. That was our sex education," she remembers.
A year later, at the age of 15, McConigley became pregnant and, while she loves her 1½-year-old son Corey "to bits", she knows things would have been different had the RSE programme been fully taught in her school. "I know without any doubt that the reason I got pregnant was that I wasn't given proper sex education. If I had known then what I know now through the youth group I am part of, I would not have become pregnant," she says.
The Young Decision Makers conference, organised by the Irish Family Planning Association and funded by global philanthropic group the Summit Foundation, offered a fascinating look at Irish teenagers and their attitudes to sexual health. Barrister Natalie McDonnell took them through their rights according to the Sexual Offences Act 2006. They asked questions about the anomaly in the act where, despite the age of consent being 17, it is not an offence for a female to have sex under this age.
Other anomalies, such as the fact that 16-year-olds may consent to medical treatment including the morning-after pill, despite being under age, were discussed. One group of young people spoke of GPs in their part of rural Ireland who had informed the Garda when teenagers had visited them seeking the contraceptive pill.
'THE LEGISLATION IS just a joke, it's all messed up," says Grace Shields (17), a member of the Milford Community Youth Group in Co Donegal. "Teenage pregnancies and STIs are spiralling out of control, so there must be something very wrong with how we are tackling the problem." She pointed to countries such as The Netherlands, which has one of the lowest rates of STIs and teen pregnancies in the EU and where the average age of first sexual activity is 19.
"The fact is, young people there are given information from an early age, and it seems the more they are told about it, the less they are inclined to do it. Here, we don't talk about sex openly, we hide these things. We need to move on. We are a developed country and we should be moving forward, not backwards," says Shields.
A global perspective on the issue was presented by William Smith, vice president for public policy at Siecus, the Sexuality, Information and Education Council of the US. He presented studies which showed the abstinence until marriage programmes funded by the US government, to the tune of $1.5 billion (€1.1 billion) over the last 25 years, were not working. The latest study showed the vast majority of those who take a virginity pledge end up having sex before they are married and before that tend to have more anal and oral sex. The same level of STIs was found among those who were sexually active and those who had taken a pledge of abstinence.
"People should be aware that this is not a uniquely American development, there are now US-funded abstinence programmes in many sub-Saharan African countries where there are HIV prevalence rates of between 4 and 40 per cent," he said. In countries such as Vietnam, where HIV has mostly spread through sex work and intravenous drugs, one-third of the funding goes towards abstinence programmes. "Ignorance is being purposely promoted while safe sex or the use of condoms is not talked about for fear of offending the funding source," Smith said.
Some of the Young Decision Makers said they had experienced abstinence groups coming to their schools as part of their RSE programme. "They told us masturbation was bad and played a dice game to show the percentage of us who would end up with infections or become pregnant if we had sex before marriage," said one teenager. "It was full of misinformation and I'm not surprised these programmes don't work."
ASKED FOR HIS opinion on research which showed abstinence programmes did not work, Tony Robinson, director of the UK branch of "purity group" the Silver Ring Thing, said people were reading what they wanted into the figures. "If you construe from the research that abstinence programmes are not working, then equally you must deduce that the safe sex message isn't working either. There is plenty of data to say the safe sex approach has not dealt with the issue," he says.
Smith suggested it was better for young people to be educated and have access to contraception than to follow a programme of abstinence only to end up having unprotected sex. And he said the fact that there was an RSE programme in Irish schools at all was a positive thing - no such programme exists in US schools - but that full implementation was key. "Society has a responsibility to help young people make educated decisions. Young people are asking for help in this area and they will get their information from somewhere. Would we prefer they got it from MySpace or are we going to give them accurate, reliable information from a trusted source? It's a no-brainer."
While some abstinence groups are active in Ireland, the philosophy is unlikely to take hold here and there are positive indications that the education system in relation to sex education is moving on. In response to a recent question in the Dáil, Minister for Education Mary Hanafin revealed the Department is funding the production of a DVD and lesson plans on contraception, STIs and sexual orientation to accompany the senior cycle of the RSE curriculum.
Post-primary schools are also to be "reminded" of their obligations in the area and inspectors will be brought in to monitor how the subject is taught. In addition, the Department will seek the views of parents of fifth-year pupils on the SPHE (Social and Personal Health Education) programme, of which RSE is a component.
Such developments are welcome but perhaps the Minister would also consider asking young people for their views on how RSE should be taught in schools.
Should her view be canvassed, McConigley says she would suggest classroom demonstrations on how to put on a condom correctly would be useful, as would more information about STIs. "We are taught about drink-driving and drugs, but not how to protect ourselves sexually," she says.
"Teachers get into trouble if they don't teach Irish or maths properly. They should also get into trouble for bad sex education. Sex is nothing to be ashamed of, it's a natural thing."
