[2008.08.30] 性教育：性启蒙要趁早

Sex education
性教育

Never too young to learn
性启蒙要趁早

Aug 28th 2008
From The Economist print edition

A debate over introducing the birds and the bees in primary schools
关于将初步性教育引入小学课堂的争论

A COMMON complaint about education in Britain is that everything begins too early: four-year-olds start school shortly after abandoning afternoon naps; toddlers barely able to hold a pen are supposed to form letters. Yet one subject, some say, is left too late. Sex education first appears on the compulsory curriculum when pupils between 11 and 14 years old learn the basics in science class; relationships, sexually transmitted diseases and the inadvisability of conceiving in one’s teens are relegated to the optional “personal, social and health education”. Primary schools need only have a policy on sex education-and for some that policy is “we don’t teach it”.
对于英国的教育，最常听到的抱怨就认为是一切都开始得太早了：四岁的孩童刚刚改掉了在家午睡的习惯便要开始上学读书了；顽童连笔都还拿不稳，就要开始学习写字。但有些人说，有一门课程开得太晚了。当11至14岁的学生开始学习科学基础课程时，性教育才第一次出现在义务教育的课程中。两性关系、性传播疾病、未成年人怀孕的不明智做法被降级为一门”个人、社会及健康教育”的选修课。小学对于性教育只需有一项政策–有些学校的政策是”我们不教授这方面的知识。”

Backed by sexual-health and children’s charities, a cross-party group of MPs is trying to change all that. In an open letter to the government, published in the Daily Telegraph on August 26th, they call for all sex education, not just the mechanics, to be made compulsory, and to start much earlier. That, they say, could help to cut the number of British teenagers who become pregnant: at 40 per thousand girls under 18 each year, Britain’s rate is outstripped in the developed world only by America’s.
在性健康和儿童慈善机构的支持下，一个由两党议员组成的小组正试图改变现状。他们在一封至政府的公开信中呼吁道，不仅仅是关于人体的性机能，各方面的性教育都应该被规定为必修课程，而且应该提早开设。这封公开信被刊登在8约6日的《每日邮报》上。他们说这样可以减少英国怀孕少女的数量。英国每1000名18岁以下的少女中，就有40人怀孕。这一比率在发达国家中仅次于美国。

Not everyone, though, is keen on teaching near-babies how babies are made. Primary-school teachers would feel “vulnerable and uncomfortable” if asked to cover such a sensitive subject, says one teaching union. It would “seriously undermine parents”, who are the proper source of such information, says the Family Education Trust, a traditionally minded charity. Worse, there are doubts that more, or earlier, sex education would in fact work as billed. An overview of the evidence on the relationship between extra sex education and teenage pregnancy, published in the British Medical Journal in 2002 and hotly contested ever since, found that the more meticulous the research, the less likely it was to find any effect at all.
但并非所有人都赞同这一做法，即向一群比婴儿大不了多少的孩童介绍婴儿是如何产生的。一个教师工会说如果要求教授这样一个敏感的课程，会让小学教师们感到 “脆弱和不自在”。家庭教育信托基金会认为这会”削弱家长的信心”，因为他们才是这方面知识的恰当的传播者。该基金会是一个比较传统保守的慈善机构。更糟糕的是，人们怀疑更多或更早的性教育会适得其反。有人对额外性教育同未成年人怀孕之间的关系的证据做了一个概述，认为进行研究时，越是小心翼翼，越是收效甚微；2002年英国医学杂志上发表了这篇概述，此后，该文章一直成为人们议论的焦点。

Still, that is not to counsel despair, says Simon Blake, the chief executive of the Brook Advisory Service, a sexual-health charity. High teenage pregnancy rates are not inevitable: even in Britain they are falling, albeit slowly, and in the Netherlands, Sweden and Switzerland, they are less than a quarter as high. The question is how much sex education has to do with the decline. Teenagers are much more likely to become parents if they are poor and ill-qualified, which suggests that improving education in general, not just sex education, would help. “The best form of contraceptive is ambition,” says Mr Blake.
布鲁克咨询服务的负责人赛门•布莱克说，我们不会知难而退。该机构是一个性健康慈善机构。很高的未成年人怀孕率并非必然的结果，甚至在英国这一比率正在缓慢下降；在荷兰，瑞典 和瑞士，这一数字最高仅有25%。问题在于性教育同怀孕率的下降之间存在多少关系。如果青少年家境贫困，缺乏必要的性知识（ill-qualified），那么，他们成为父母的可能性就会更大。这表明，对教育做整体上的改善会更有成效，而不应仅仅局限于性教育。布莱克先生说：”最好的避孕措施就是我们的志向”

But that does not mean earlier sex education might not be justified for other reasons. “It’s about teaching communication skills and demystifying the body,” says Roger Ingham, a professor of health at Southampton University, “so that as children grow up, they are better able to resist coercion and peer pressure to have sex.” He adds: “no one is suggesting four-year-olds should be taught how to have sex.”
但是这并不意味着提前进行性教育是毫无理由的。罗格•伊格汉姆说：”早期教育的内容是关于交往的技巧，消除学生们对人体的神秘感，这样一来，当学生长大后，他们就能更好地抵御强制的力量和同辈的压力，控制自己的性行为。”他还补充说：”没有人会建议去教一个4岁的小孩如何同异性发生性关系。”罗格•伊格汉姆是南安普顿大学 的健康学教授。

Even if better and earlier sex education does not cut teenage pregnancy, that doesn’t negate its importance, agrees Mr Blake. British parents are often too embarrassed to talk about where babies come from with their own offspring, he says, so some unfortunate children reach puberty before anyone has prepared them for the physical changes it brings. People’s earliest sexual experiences set the tone for their future sex lives-which bodes ill for many British teenagers. “If you ask youngsters in the Netherlands why they first had sex, they will say they thought they were in love,” he says. “In Britain, they will say they were drunk, or all their mates were doing it, or they had the opportunity and wanted to see what it was like.”
布莱克先生认为，即使早期、良好的性教育不能降低未成年人怀孕的比率，也不会削弱其自身的重要性。他说，英国的家长总是认为同自己的孩子谈起婴儿的产生过程是一件很尴尬的事情。因此，当一些儿童进入青春期时，没有人让他们对自己身体上产生的种种变化做好心理准备。这些孩子是不幸运的。人的最早的性经历奠定了他今后的性生活的基调–而这对许多英国的青少年来说可不是个好兆头。他说：”如果你问荷兰的青少年为何会初次发生性关系，他们会回答是应为相互爱慕；而在英国，他们则会说是因为喝醉了，或者说他们的朋友都这么做，或者是恰好有机会，于是就想看看对方的身体是什么样子。”

译者：zhs2046    http://www.ecocn.org/forum/viewthread.php?tid=13736&extra=page%3D1