Sex education curriculum
Open-knowledge reference entry
A sex education curriculum is a sex education program encompassing the methods, materials, and assessments exercised to inform individuals of the issues relating to human sexuality, including human sexual anatomy, sexual reproduction, sexual intercourse, reproductive health, emotional relations, reproductive rights and responsibilities, abstinence, birth control, and other aspects of human sexual behavior.
European Union
Purpose
The purpose of sexuality education curriculum in Europe is to facilitate adolescents to gain knowledge, attitudes, skills, and values to make appropriate and healthy choices in their sexual behavior, thus preventing them from sexually transmitted infections, including HIV and HPV, teenage or unwanted pregnancies, and from domestic and sexual violence, contributing to a greater society. While European educators and policymakers recognize the benefits of sexuality education as being essential in the realm of sexual health, the content and approach of the curriculum have undergone significant changes over time and differ among each European country. Influenced by politics, as well as social and religious movements, European educators and policymakers recognize the struggle to find common criteria of sexuality education curriculum.
Common sex education curricula
Researchers identify the most common delivery of sexuality education curriculum as being through a biology, relationship, and ideological focus. In this form of curriculum, practiced through a moral and informative approach by a teacher's instruction, attention is directed towards the reproductive and physical aspects of sexuality education rather than the emotional and social aspects. While this approach is identified as the most common form of sexuality education in Europe, Europe is not limited to this practice. With a total of twenty-seven countries within the European Union, a wide variety of practices are implemented in an attempt to address and/or ignore sexuality education. European policymakers and educators recognize the need for an implementation of an ideal curriculum for European countries to adopt, while distinguishing the political, social, and religious movements that hinder this action.
The Safe Project
The Safe Project was introduced by a coalition of European health organizations including the IPPF European Network, WHO Regional Office for Europe, and Lund University, in 2004 in response to European policymakers and educators speaking out about the political, social, and religious struggles encountered when implementing sexuality education curriculum in Europe.
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This entry incorporates text from “Sex education curriculum” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.