Sex education has long been a topic that parents and schools have kept secret. However, in the view of Liu Wenli, a professor at Beijing Normal University and a researcher of children's sex education, in fact, everyone's understanding of sex education is narrow, and sex education should teach children not only the knowledge of sexual health, but also important topics such as interpersonal communication, prevention of aggression, and family relationships. But to teach children this, parents and teachers first need to break their shame.
This article is reproduced from the public number: Yixiclub (ID: yixiclub)
Wen 丨 Liu Wenli ed
Hello everyone, I'm Liu Wenli, I'm doing research on children's sex education, starting in 1988, and it's been 35 years since this year.
I was admitted to the Department of Biology of Beijing Normal University in 1987 as a graduate student in biology education. That year, the State Education Commission issued a notice on the introduction of "adolescent education" in middle schools. In this circular, three things are stipulated: teacher training, the preparation of sex education programmes and teaching materials, and the strengthening of scientific research.
My supervisor especially encouraged me to study how to do sex education from the perspective of biological education, so it should be said that I responded to the call of the country and entered the field of sex education.
You may think that children's sex education is a new field of research that has only emerged in recent years, but it is not, but I think that the era of 1988 was a golden age of children's sex education research in our country.
Where should sex education take place?
For a long time, our work was not called "sex education" but "adolescent education", but we thought it was too late to introduce sex education in adolescence.
Before a child enters puberty, he is actually a sexual individual. Between the ages of 2 and 6, children will ask questions about sex:
Where am I from?
Why do boys have chicks and girls don't?
Why do boys pee standing and girls pee squat?
Why can't boys have children?
Why are mom's breasts so big and daddy's breasts so small?
……
In the face of these problems of children, what should you do as a parent? Parents are especially encouraged to respond positively to these issues. In the process of children's growth, especially in the early years, the need for skin touch, the establishment of secure attachment relationships, and the acceptance of their own bodies are actually things we need to pay attention to.
So how should parents respond? Where should sex education take place?
There is now a lot of research evidence that curriculum-based sexuality education works best in schools. First, the place is safe, the classroom is planned by the teacher, and this knowledge is systematic; Education is compulsory from the first grade of primary school to the third grade of lower secondary school, and it is also very important for educational equity if every child has access to sex education during the nine years of school.
Since 2006, I have contacted the principals of schools for migrant children in Beijing and asked them if they can enter the school to do curriculum research on primary sex education. These principals generally feel that sex education is too sensitive and fear that parents will object.
And they also suggested to me, "Can you not use the word "sex education", use "health education or safety education", and "life education" and so on, just don't use the word "sex"."
This also caused me to think a little, we do children's sex education, if you don't use the word "sex education", who else do you expect to help you establish such a discipline? If this subject cannot be established, how can we set up such a class in schools so that children have the opportunity to receive sex education?
Therefore, I have been advocating and insisting on using the three words "sex education" to do the construction and research of our discipline over the years.
Liu Wenli gives lessons to students
We were fortunate to meet the principal of a private migrant school that we later worked with, who understood and supported sex education, which gave us the opportunity to enter his school to conduct curriculum research on sex education in primary schools.
The reason why I chose to do sex education research in a private migrant school is also my own value orientation, and I hope to do what I can for educational equity.
Reassure parents
The subject of sex education is not the same as other disciplines, it has the so-called social sensitivity, or cultural sensitivity, everyone may have different views on sex education, including how to look at sex education. If there are parents who do not understand, do not understand, or even oppose this matter, it is difficult for us to continue sex education in schools.
So one of the very important things we do is organise workshops and interviews for parents to have the opportunity to understand what sex education for our children does and why sex education is done in primary schools.
There will indeed be parents who have some questions, does sex education need to be done so early? My child is only in first grade.
We will ask parents, what do you think sex education means? They say, isn't it just about having children? You see I didn't receive sex education, my child was born, my child is quite good, and when the child grows up in the future, he will naturally know these things, and he doesn't have to teach it in the classroom.
I think this may not be the unique understanding of parents in migrant schools, there may be many people who think so, so we also popularize comprehensive sex education to parents——
It is a curriculum-based process that explores the cognitive, emotional, physical, and social dimensions of meaning, in which children not only learn relevant knowledge, but also develop their life skills and values.
Taking interpersonal relationships as an example, interpersonal relationships are a very core content in comprehensive sexuality education, and the purpose is to help children establish harmonious interpersonal relationships. In the early stage of harmonious interpersonal relationship construction, children need to find friends, communicate with friends, and express their love for friends, which requires a lot of communication and negotiation and communication skills.
When we are older, we will tell our children how to deal with friendship and love between people, and how to do it when you express your liking for others.
Further developments, such as marriage, family, and parenting, also have gender equality, the cultivation of values, and so on. Under such a very broad and rich educational system, we believe that children can achieve healthy growth.
When we give this information to parents, they feel that the sex education you do is such content, which is helpful for my child. At the same time, they will also feel that the topic of sex, at home do not know how to talk to children, if the school opens this course, it also helps solve a lot of family sex education problems, so the attitude of parents has become very positive.
When we train parents, we use some weekends or they pick up their children and come an hour early, and we use that time to organize some activities.
This is one of those participatory activities. Parents were divided into different groups, each group was given a large white paper, one parent was asked to lie on the large white paper, and the other parent drew the outline of his body. Then we asked these parents to mark all the human organs they knew of in the outline of the human body and write the scientific name.
After this activity, I asked a question, "Can anyone tell me if this picture you drew is a male or a female?"
People said, "This is a man."
So I said, "How do you show that he's a man?"
"You see he doesn't have long hair."
We then ask, "What do you think is the most essential difference between men and women?" Everyone was embarrassed to say it, and finally said "the reproductive organs are different". I encourage parents to draw it.
At this time, a very interesting phenomenon can be observed, the big black pen in their hands is like beating drums and passing flowers, and no one is willing to take the big black pen to draw.
I encourage the parents, I say that there must be a volunteer in your group to draw it, other parents should not be idle, you have to mark its scientific name on it, and some other parents should say these names out loud.
Some parents finally plucked up the courage to draw it and quickly drew another trouser cover.
Many parents finally overcome psychological barriers, and they feel that these unspeakable and hot words can finally be spoken.
In the past ten years, through such training and activities, parents have been very supportive and understanding of sex education, and we are very happy that no parent has come forward to oppose it, saying that sex education cannot be carried out in schools.
In fact, in the family, parents are very important to carry out sex education for their children, if these scientific words cannot come out of the mouth, or you feel very difficult and uncomfortable, family sex education is difficult to carry out.
Opening your mouth is the first step, and many parents prefer that you tell him the specific solution to family sex education. For example, if my child asks me where I come from, then you tell me how I am going to answer. But in fact, we want parents to understand why they do this, what are the reasons behind it and the reason.
If a very young child asks, "Where am I from?" You tell him, "You were born from your mother's belly," which must be better than telling him, "You picked it up in the trash, you fished it from the river, you paid for it" and so on.
Why is that answered?
First, born from the mother's belly, this is a scientific fact, you did not cheat the child;
Second, when the scientific facts are presented to the child, you hug the child with a warm smile, and you tell him that this connection between his life and your life can be further deepened.
This is a very precious time for you and your child to bond and should not be missed. Parents will also further reflect that on other occasions in my family life, I should also try my best to get closer to our relationship with my children.
School teachers also need sex education
Another very key force in sex education in schools is teachers.
I have always advocated training teachers in schools, rather than having members of our research group go to class, and so do we
Sex education is not carried out in the form of training volunteers.
Teachers have teacher qualification certificates, which are nationally recognized qualifications, and they understand the laws of children's development, understand the laws of teaching, and can effectively organize teaching in the process of studying in normal colleges, which are some of the very important abilities in our sex education.
Moreover, it is the teacher who can accompany the child in school for a long time, and if the teacher knows sex education, it is an important force for the child to seek help at school, and they can help the child at any time.
Some teachers are worried and say, "Teacher Liu, I'm not married yet, I haven't even talked about my partner, how can I talk about this in class?"
Some teachers do feel that sex education cannot be taught in schools and cannot be taught to children of younger ages. We will communicate with the principal and we respect the teacher's ideas and opinions, but we feel that he is not suitable to teach sex education at this stage.
In sex education training, we found that being ashamed to talk about sex exists not only among parents, but also among teachers.
As an example, pronouncing the names of reproductive organs like "penis" and "clitoris" is really difficult for some teachers. Some teachers will also question us and say, why do we have to say the word "penis", can't I say "little chicken"?
If you say to your child at home that chicks are okay, in the classroom, we must use scientific vocabulary, which actually involves the standardization of language in sex education.
But during several trainings, it was difficult for the teachers to say the word out of their mouths, so we did some activities with the teachers, hoping to change the unspeakable status quo through activities.
For example, in the actual training, I will put the penis model in a large box and ask each teacher to take out the penis model from this box. I observed the movements and expressions of the teachers, got to the box, put my hand in, as if it had been burned, and then retracted. What is there a word called? Hot potato, face is also flushed, and you can even see the state of muscle tension.
I encouraged them to take it from every teacher, and you see, the teacher has already taken it, and you will take it with you. Some teachers' hands are shaking.
I think they are overcoming a big psychological barrier, maybe on the road of their previous life, they have never touched the penis model, so it is a very peculiar experience for them, but we hope that the teachers can be ashamed and sensitive to sex itself through such an activity.
Today I originally wanted to take the penis model to the scene, but I was worried that the platform review would not pass, and then put a code on me, which would be even worse.
We also gave each teacher a condom and asked them to put the condom on the penis model in the correct way. Some teachers told me that I wasn't married and I had never seen a condom. I told her that if we want to teach sex education classes, as a teacher, you must first understand and learn to use it correctly.
After such learning and training, many teachers are no longer afraid of this penis model, and also show that they have a comfortable attitude and a calm attitude in this matter. Teachers have overcome some of the shame of sex and are able to say all the words sex, which I think is an important step for our teaching to go smoothly.
Teacher Liu's sex education class
There are many topics in the class, I will give you a few examples -
01
Take care of your reproductive organs
In the first grade, we will talk about "developing good habits and hygiene", and the other is to take care of the reproductive organs.
We usually do pre-class interviews with students to get an idea of what they already know.
We ask the children, are they wearing underwear? Maybe everyone thinks that there is no one who does not wear underwear. But when we talk to these kids, some kids do tell us they don't wear underwear.
We will also ask, do you wash your external genitalia every day? Some children said no. If you wear underwear, do you wash your underwear every day? Some children also shake their heads. We feel that developing good hygiene habits from an early age is actually conducive to the protection of children's reproductive organs.
We also very much encourage children to wash your external genitalia every day, using a separate basin and using your own separate towel. Some children said that they were mixed with their parents at home, and after class, the children would come home and say, Mom, you need to buy me a pot, you need to buy me a towel.
Parents are also very supportive. Therefore, in sex education, we not only educate children in the classroom, but also pass on some relevant scientific knowledge to influence their parents after they go home.
02
Privacy Parts
This is our second grade class, about "the private parts of the body." This is the 2013 CCTV "News Investigation" program did an issue of "The Hidden Evil of Sexual Assault", and they went to our experimental school to film the children's classroom.
In this classroom, children are very natural and calm in receiving sex education, unlike some teachers who think or worry, thinking that the child will not fry the pot and make a fuss. This also gives teachers a lot of confidence that such a classroom can be controlled and can guide children well.
In this book, we will tell your child where the private parts of your body are, and who can touch your private parts under what circumstances. For example, when Mom and Dad help you bathe, when the doctor helps you check your body, there is a guardian present.
Who can't touch your private parts? We tell our children that it is possible to make such a request, whether strangers or acquaintances, but you must firmly refuse.
How to refuse? We also train children in the classroom to say "no" in your spoken language and then "no" in your body language, in a very firm tone. After training in this way, once they encounter some situations, they can apply the knowledge and skills they have learned in the classroom to actual situations.
03
Prevention of child sexual abuse
In the fifth grade, children will learn the themes of "preventing child sexual abuse" and "responding to child sexual abuse", and these scenes tell children that if you encounter such a scene, you should be vigilant.
We tell our children that there are people who will expose their external genitalia in front of the child in order to achieve their own goals.
What do you do if this happens to you? For example, instead of screaming, you quickly walk past him and ask your trusted adult for help.
With such an education, it must be better than a child who never knows that such a thing will happen, and when he sees this situation, if he is frightened, it will actually leave some bad effects.
Therefore, we feel that to prevent child sexual abuse, there is indeed some knowledge that must be taught first, and prevention must be put first. At present, sexual abuse of children has attracted widespread attention from the state, the government and society. To prevent child sexual abuse, families, schools, society, and the government should work together.
Sex education is not equal to anti-sexual assault education, nor can it be completed in one or two class hours, it is actually a gradual process.
From the first grade of primary school to the fifth grade, in the continuous learning, children can understand what sex is, what their physical development is, what kind of rights I have, this body is mine, I speak counts, and I have the right to refuse when I go against my will.
By the fifth grade, when we talk about preventing and responding to child sexual abuse, children have the relevant basic knowledge and abilities.
04
Emotional violence
When it comes to child violence, everyone may be relatively familiar with physical violence and sexual violence, but there is another kind of violence that is easy to be overlooked, that is, emotional violence. For example, using some language to ridicule, sarcasm, threaten, intimidate children, so that they are emotionally hurt.
Who would perpetrate such emotional violence on children? For example, their parents, such as our teachers, such as their peers, are likely to do this. In class, we will tell our children that your parents are not allowed to say such things that hurt your emotions.
A girl said, at home, my mother told me, if you don't study well, I will send you back to your hometown. So she worries all day that she will be sent back to her hometown. These migrant children follow their parents to the city, and one of the things they are very anxious about is being separated from their parents. From the perspective of child development, we prefer that children can always grow up with their parents, which is safer and healthier for children.
After the child said this, we told her that the mother should not tell you this, in fact, this is an emotional violence against you. When the child comes home, he will say to her mother, Mom, you can't say this about me in the future, you are emotionally violent to me. Her mother was shocked, saying that you see that my child still understands emotional violence, and came to remind me.
My mother also called the school and said to the head teacher, I think this lesson opened by your school is really good, and also remind us that parents must pay attention to what they usually say, and they can't hurt their children.
Whether it is emotional violence, sexual violence or physical violence, there are actually some very important social factors behind it. This is a matter of gender equality, and if there is awareness of gender equality in a society, this gender-based violence can be reduced to some extent.
From the data we received, elementary school students have formed gender stereotypes, in fact, earlier, we can see from the Science 2017 article that girls have formed gender stereotypes related to intelligence by the age of 6.
She will think that boys are smarter than girls, that only boys can play games that only those who are particularly smart can play, and she herself is not inclined to choose those games because she feels that she is not smart enough, or that boys are not smart.
In fact, this gender stereotype can hinder the development of boys and girls, including their hobbies, professional choices, and career choices. We don't want such gender stereotypes to limit children's development, so a very important concept in sex education is gender equality.
05
Adolescent love
In comprehensive sexuality education, there is a very important core concept, which is interpersonal relationships. In addition to helping children establish harmonious interpersonal relationships, they will also encounter many very core life problems in the course of their lives, such as love, marriage, family, parenting, etc., which are all we need to educate children in primary school.
We have a theme in fifth grade that is "adolescent love". We will tell our children that love also needs to be learned, adolescent love is very beautiful, very precious, and very innocent, worthy of your cherishing, but it is easy to change. If you have a relationship with a person during adolescence, you may not expect the relationship to last long or grow old.
We also tell mom and dad that adolescent relationships are when children are looking for a self-identity. During this process, the child will practice how to express emotions, how to make decisions, how to agree or how to refuse.
These abilities need to be cultivated in their early growth, rather than when they fall in love as adults, this ability will naturally grow, and love needs to be learned and prepared.
06
Marriage and divorce
Now there are many children growing up in divorced families, and we had a theme in the third grade of elementary school, which was "marriage and divorce".
In fact, in many divorced families, parents avoid talking to their children about it, and in our school curriculum, there are very few courses that will cover this content. Children living in such a family, their mental pressure is actually very high, and they are ashamed to seek help, feeling that this is a matter that they can't talk about. But when we talk about it in class, we touch on the very weak parts of children's hearts.
One of the girls told the head teacher that after her parents divorced, she lived with her grandmother, and her grandmother often said in front of the girl, "Mom abandoned your father and doesn't want you." So there is actually a rift between this girl's relationship and her mother.
After learning this lesson, she realized that even though Mom and Dad divorced, they still loved me, and I loved Mom and Dad. On Mother's Day, she took the initiative to call her mother, and on the phone she said to her mother, "Mom, I love you".
When her mother heard her daughter say this, she burst into tears, and for the first time she heard her daughter say to her, "Mom, I love you." She was also very touched and called the head teacher and said, "It's good that your school has such a class, and the emotional connection between me and my daughter is even closer." So in this process, we want the child to understand that divorce is a matter between adults, not the child's fault.
After more than ten years of hard work, we have built a curriculum system for primary sex education, with 12 lessons a year, a total of 72 hours from grade 1 to grade 6. Each theme and unit has an intrinsic logical relationship and is a gradual learning process, from the first grade to the sixth grade, the child can form a more complete understanding of sexuality.
It's a network like this we help children build, and we want to know what kind of positive impact six years of sex education will have on children.
When the children were about to graduate in sixth grade, we did a study with the team of Professor Liu Chao of the State Key Laboratory of Cognitive Neuroscience and Learning at Beijing Normal University.
We asked a graduating child who had received six years of sex education to compare with a child of the same age in another homogeneous school and do a series of psychological and behavioral experiments. In these experiments, we can see that there is a significant difference in fairness and justice between the children in the two groups.
Relatively generally speaking, in terms of relationships, comprehensive sexuality education can help children treat all those around them more fairly and justly. The study was published in the journal Sex Education in 2020.
The framework of sex education we build pays great attention to the cultivation of children's values, fairness, justice, freedom, democracy, respect, diversity, inclusiveness and non-discrimination. Fairness and justice are actually important contents of the core values of socialism, so I have always said that sex education is the best curriculum to practice the core values of socialism, which is what we have learned from research.
We also made a sex education book for children, which was officially published from 2010 to 2017. It took 10 years in between, and each book underwent several rounds of teaching practice.
"Cherish Life: A Reader of Sexual Health Education for Primary School Students" published in 2010-2017
In February 2017, someone posted some pictures from the reading book, which caused a very wide discussion. The positive side of this discussion is that everyone knows that there is such a thing as children's sex education, and they think that children's sex education is very important.
However, in January 2019, there were other opinions on the Internet, and there were some controversial points, which led to the removal of this set of readers.
In fact, sex education is a controversial field, controversial I think it is not terrible, we need to use a rigorous scientific attitude to do relevant research, to provide evidence to prove why sex education should be done at this age, what kind of benefits it has on children's development.
Let me give you another example, in the fourth grade, there is a topic of "sexually transmitted infections", which is taught in two lessons.
In the pre-class interview, I asked the child, do you know about STDs? They say, know. I said, how do you know? The street poles are littered with small advertisements, they say, and there are also in underground passages.
I said, do you know what STDs are? They said, I don't know, but we know that it has a special medicine that can cure it, and it is also said in the small advertisement.
As you can see, the children actually know these things, but through small advertisements.
The picture on the left is what I downloaded from the Internet, and the picture on the right is where we are in class. In such a safe environment, sex education is taught by trained and qualified teachers, who design lesson plans, ask questions, and guide children's thinking.
Will children access this sexual information in the form of small advertisements that are safer and healthier, or in the classroom?
Now there is a phenomenon that some popular science books for children, especially those related to sex education, will be put under a magnifying glass to carefully pick faults, such as some sexual words can not be spoken, some anatomical drawings of reproductive organs can not be put, if you want to put it must also be blurred. In such an environment, it is difficult for us to pass on real scientific knowledge to children.
However, we are very pleased to see that in 2020, when the new Law on the Protection of Minors was revised, "sex education" was put in. In our country, sex education has a legal status, and it is clearly stated in this law that schools and kindergartens should carry out sex education suitable for minors for their age.
In the future research field of sex education in China, the Law on the Protection of Minors puts forward higher requirements for us, and I believe that more people will enter this research field.
There are also many people who ask me, you have been doing school sex education for so many years, you have persevered in so many difficulties, what is the reason for you to be so persistent?
We have a very profound experience in children's sex education, that is, it is good for children's development, and it has a positive effect on family harmony and social construction.
At that time, I invited Professor Ye Gongshao, a well-known pediatric health expert in our country. When Zhou Enlai was premier, he attached great importance to sex education, and repeatedly asked Professor Ye Gongshao and Professor Wu Jieping to carry out sex education in schools.
When I went to Professor Ye's house to get my opinion on the external review of my thesis, she took my hand, patted me on the shoulder and said, Xiao Liu, you see that you are doing sex education at such a young age, it is really very good, you must stick to it and remember Premier Zhou's instructions. At that time, I felt that I had taken over such a responsibility from the older generation of scientists, and this responsibility has always inspired me to work hard for sex education for so long.
I am also very grateful that when we have been doing sex education over the years, there are so many experts, scholars, children, teachers, parents, and all colleagues who care about sex education, which gives us a lot of confidence and makes us see that it is actually a responsibility on our shoulders. Your support and help will make children's sex education have a better future.
Thank you.
Discover quality education