Priests, Sellotape and No Condoms: What Sort of Sex Education Did You Get at School?

When my husband was in sixth year, back in the early 90s, his school was visited by none other than Father Michael Cleary. Actually, it seems that half the schools in Leinster were visited by Michael Clearly in the early 90s - he turned up at my school too, and at the schools of loads of my friends. But it was in my husband's school that he delivered the immortal words, 'Now, I've never had sex, but I imagine that having sex with a condom is like having a shower with a raincoat on.'

Now, not only do we now know that when he offered this wonderful insight Michael Cleary had indeed had sex and FATHERED A CHILD (so at least we know he didn't use a condom on that occasion at least), and not only was he actively encouraging unsafe sex, but he was telling a group of boys and girls not to use condoms in an age when HIV and AIDS was a guaranteed death sentence. And no teacher said a word.

Yes, that was what sex education was like in Ireland just over 20 years ago. While Father Michael refrained from sharing his sexual "wisdom" when he visited my school, the sex education we did get wasn't much better, despite the fact that, for a convent school, it was relatively liberal. In sixth year, we got a full day of talks from the Catholic Marriage Advisory Council. They did mention different forms of contraception, but the general message was 'but of course officially this is all against church teaching'. In fact, as it turned out, nearly all my and my friend's sex and contraception education came from Just Seventeen, and thank god for that, because the advice there was sensible and practical and would give answers to the sorts of questions no official teacher was likely to be asked. Like anything to do with hand jobs, basically.

From all accounts, things have generally improved since then. Yes, extreme conservative groups like Pure of Heart have been invited give ridiculous talks to some schools in which they stick kids together with Sellotape in some mysterious attempt to show what happens when you shag loads of people, but the Department of Educations's Relationships and Sexuality Education programme advises schools to give students information about contraception and same sex relationships. Of course, not all schools will choose to follow this advice. But while that's bad enough, what's even worse is that virtually no school at all is talking to kids about issues that increasingly affect their lives at an early age: porn and consent.

I recently interviewed the brilliant Laura Bates of the Everyday Sexism project, which documents women's and girls' experiences of sexist attitudes and behavior. Laura says that the stories which upset her most are the ones she hears from young girls, and in her new book Everyday Sexism she quotes a submission from a 13 year old girl which made me cry. The girl writes

I am 13 and I am so scared to have sex it makes me cry nearly every day. We had sex education in Year 6 and I felt fine about it, but now some of the boys at school keep sending us these videos of sex which are much worse than what we learned about and it looks so horrible and like it hurts, and at night I get really scared that one day I will have to do it.

The girl - and just as worryingly, the boys who sent the videos - seemingly have no idea that there is a difference between porn and sex. And as the submissions Laura receives makes clear, this all means many girls and boys are developing very worrying ideas about what sex should be like for men and women. Laura believes passionately that these issues should be discussed in schools.She told me:

“If I could change one thing that I thought would have the biggest impact, it would be that, no question. It makes absolutely zero sense, when we know that [children are] dealing with these things, that we’re not choosing to give them the tools to help them cope, and to support them and help them navigate. The problem isn’t necessarily that porn itself is inherently damaging, it’s that they don’t even have any concept of the fact that there’s a difference between pornography and real-life sex. But it would be so simple to get these issues across in an age-appropriate way in the classroom.

So what sort of sex education, if any, did you get at school? Did Father Michael Cleary ever turn up? What education would have been actually useful or helpful? And what do you think girls and boys should be taught in schools today?