Subject: New Grade-School Sexuality Classes Go Beyond Birds and Bees to Explicit Basics 
Date: Published: 4/2/93 (127 lines)
Source: Wall Street Journal. Copyright Dow Jones & Co. Inc.

    Education:
    New Grade-School Sexuality Classes Go
    Beyond Birds and Bees to Explicit Basics
    ----
    By Suzanne Alexander
    Staff Reporter of The Wall Street Journal

    When students in Deborah Ellis's kindergarten class ask where
 babies come from, the Irvington, N. J., teacher reads aloud to them
 from a new curriculum adopted districtwide this school year:
    "When a woman and a man who love each other go to bed, they like
 to hug and kiss.
    "Sometimes, if they both want to, the man puts his penis in the
 woman's vagina and that feels really good for both of them.
    "Sperm come out through the man's penis.  If one tiny sperm meets
 a tiny egg inside the woman's body, a baby is started....  "
    While New York elementary schools were recently in an uproar over
 the wisdom of a curriculum that talks about homosexuality, schools
 in other places are using far more graphic material to teach the
 birds and the bees to children at a much earlier age than in the
 past.
    Concerned about teenage pregnancy, the spread of AIDS and the
 threat of child abuse, many educators say they can't wait until the
 fifth or sixth grade to teach sex education.  "A lot of these younger
 kids know it anyway," says Ms. Ellis, a teacher at Madison Avenue
 Elementary School in Irvington, near Newark.  "Kids watch the adult
 channels and HBO.... We want them to feel comfortable talking
 about it."
    Irvington, partly motivated by high teenage-pregnancy rates,
 adopted its new, explicit sex-education materials for
 elementary-school children last fall.  Many states, including
 Virginia and New Jersey, are now requiring that schools teach
 comprehensive "family life" curricula beginning in kindergarten.
    Last October, Rutgers University Press published "Learning About
 Family Life," possibly the first sex-education curriculum designed
 specifically for five-to-eight-year-olds.  So far, Rutgers says about
 70 school districts nationwide, including Irvington, have bought the
 curricular materials, including 43 lesson plans with titles such as
 "Uncle Seth has HIV," "Learning about our genital parts" and
 "Talking about touches," which urges that masturbation be done in
 private.
    Some child psychologists caution that lessons on sexuality could
 frighten young children who don't understand the information.  "I
 think it can make them more anxious than they need to be," says
 Robert Pianta, a psychology professor at the University of Virginia.
    Critics complain that it is not the schools' job to teach about
 the pleasure of sex, at any age.  "There's got to be some constraint.
 The fact that it's pleasurable and natural doesn't mean it has to be
 discussed," says Patrick McCarthy, of the Jefferson Center for
 Character Education, a nonprofit group in Pasadena, Calif., that
 promotes the teaching of ethics in schools.
    Many parents and clergy agree that in this society, kids need to
 know the facts early.  Those involved in devising Irvington's
 sexuality curriculum, which also includes other sex-education
 materials used since 1985, say that some parents there have given up
 relying strictly on using their own moral standards to influence
 their children.  "It's very popular now for teenage boys to stay
 overnight at girls' houses.  There are no sanctions," complains
 Kathleen Witcher, president of the Essex County parent-teacher
 council, which includes Irvington.
    Sex education is typically reserved for students on the brink of
 puberty, in fifth or sixth grade.  Traditionally, girls go to one
 room and boys to another to learn about the menstrual cycle,
 nocturnal emissions and other facts of life.  But in Alexandria, Va.,
 in a curriculum that is typical of the new approach, kindergartners
 learn basic anatomy terms, such as penis and vulva, and
 sexual-safety lessons on "good and bad touching."
    "If students are familiar with sexuality concepts and are
 comfortable at an early age, they're more likely to ask questions
 later before they succumb to peer pressure that they're not ready
 for," says Dianne L. Cole, coordinator for the New Jersey Department
 of Education's HIV/Health Education program.
    Sex education isn't the only emphasis of the family-life lessons
 for the lower grades.  States are also requiring teaching about
 different types of families and cultural traditions, for example.
 Sexuality and HIV/AIDS education are required in many states, with
 local districts usually allowed to determine the grade level at
 which the lessons are given.
    Early sex education gained a boost in 1991 with the publication
 of "Guidelines for Comprehensive Sexuality Education," a
 kindergarten-to-12th-grade guide developed by a group of health and
 education professionals organized by the Sex Information and
 Education Council of the U. S. The council is a nonprofit New York
 research group that advocates wider sex education.  Its guidelines,
 intended to help schools create curricula, outline topics for
 discussion in every grade, such as sexual orientation and
 reproduction, human sexual response and fantasy, masturbation and
 sexual abuse.
    Rutgers University Press borrowed somewhat from the guidelines in
 writing its "Family Life" curriculum.  The premise of that
 curriculum, according to its introduction, "is that sexuality is a
 part of daily living, as essential to normal functioning as
 mathematics and reading.... This curriculum supports the concept
 that sex is pleasurable and that curiosity about one's body is
 natural and healthy."
    The Madison, N. J., school district rejected the Rutgers book.  "If
 children at that age ask where babies come from, you should tell
 them Mommy's tummy," says Susan LeGlise, assistant superintendent of
 schools.  "We don't handle AIDS in kindergarten and first grade.  We
 feel health and sexuality issues are really better handled in fourth
 and fifth grade."
    Leslie Holliday, a parent in Newton, Mass., is fighting a
 proposal by the school board to expand and update its sexuality and
 HIV/AIDS curriculum for all grades using some of the sex-information
 council's guidelines.  "It's not a matter of immediate concern for a
 child to understand how to be physically intimate with another human
 being," she says.
    Some educators, however, such as Ms. Ellis of Madison Avenue
 Elementary School in Irvington, rave about the Rutgers book because
 it addresses questions that kids have.  Ms. Witcher of the Irvington
 parent-teacher council says few parents have taken advantage of
 their right to take their children out of sex-education courses in
 the lower grades since they began in 1985.
    "I think it's important that they know what sex is, even at that
 age," says the Rev. Janet Macgregor-Williams, pastor at Sanford
 Heights Presbyterian Church in Irvington.  "We need to have our
 children feeling good about their bodies.  They need to be able to
 take control and say, `I don't like it when you touch me this way.'"

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