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In recent years, a new idea has emerged about how young people should be taught about sex and relationships. Sex education has been expanded into a broader curriculum, involving considerations about the ethics of relationships, social responsibility, and lessons on whichever concerns dominate the press of the time, from sexually transmitted diseases to teenage pregnancy.
Today, a new paradigm has emerged, called Comprehensive Sexuality Education (henceforth, CSE). As the name suggests, it is both more thorough than previous ideas and also wider reaching. CSE amounts to a powerful moral intervention into the lives of children around the world that happens as a routine part of the school day. Lessons aim to shape children’s attitudes and values in the most intimate sphere of their lives. The goal is to bring about social change.
Proponents of CSE have become obsessed with promoting the idea that children are sexual beings and that their sexual pleasure is paramount. This view is not confined to fringe academic theories, but takes centre stage in the policies and advocacy work of major international NGOs. The inevitable result is that the CSE curriculum involves attempts to sexualise children in a way that the majority of parents in European countries would find objectionable.
This report takes apart the CSE curriculum, and exposes its desire to sexualise the lives of young children.
