Sex Miseducation

(My colleague has to teach a group of Year 5 students about puberty and how our bodies are changing.)

Colleague: “Children shouldn’t need to learn about this sort of stuff! They’re too young!”

Me: “How old were you?”

Colleague: *blushing a little* “Nobody ever taught me about sex education. I had to learn through medical textbooks.”

Me: “That seems a pretty odd way to find out about sex. Anyway, [Headmaster] wants you to be creative. Something that catches the children’s attention and let them know that this is serious. They’re growing into adults and they need to know about sex soon.”

Colleague: “But not at ten!”

Me: *shrugs* “He told us to.”

(A couple of days later, I found my colleague arguing with her classroom assistant, pleading for her not to tell the headmaster. When I came in and asked what the problem was, the classroom assistant told me that my colleague had been setting up an animation she found online for the Sex Ed talk. I won’t say which animation it was, but I will say that it is considered possibly the worst animation in the world and DEFINITELY sickening enough to watch. Apparently, the teacher was going to turn it on and make them watch the whole eighty minutes of distorted nightmares while she stood outside the door and pushed anyone back inside. This was because she didn’t want to teach primary school children about sex.)