Let’s Talk About Sex – WAB and FCD International Department share their developing sex education programs and strategies

One of the most contentious debates going on in the world is sex education, from how we define it to whether we should even allow this type of education to be part of the formal curriculum. There are those for and against such issues as sexuality and gender being broached in the classroom. Sex education, also described as sexuality education, is evolving from the purely biological to even including various mental health issues.

In this technologically advanced era, children have greater exposure to sexually explicit materials (check our feature on pg 48) through access to the Internet and other media, which means it’s vital to equip them with the knowledge and skills to make responsible choices.

The United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization’s (UNESCO) International Technical Guidance on Sexuality Education (ITGSE) advises that schools and educators touch on and explore the topic of sexuality in the classrooms in order to play the vital role teachers have in ensuring the protection and well being of young children and teens. Teachers also must work together with parents and the wider community.

This article in no way tries to dictate how schools should or shouldn’t approach this sensitive issue, but rather to highlight the approaches taken at two Beijing schools.

According to the ITGSE, “The rules that govern sexual behavior differ widely across and within cultures. Certain behaviors are seen as acceptable and desirable while others are considered unacceptable. This does not mean that these behaviors do not occur, or that they should be excluded from discussion within the context of sexuality education.”

In 2010, the regional office of the World Health Organization in Europe published the “Standards for Sexuality Education in Europe: A framework for policy-makers, educational and health authorities and specialists.” Meanwhile, UNESCO-ITGSE has outlined several topic areas and age groups where sexuality and gender education should start. Check pg 32 for more details.

The WHO guideline was spearheaded by Dr. Gunta Lazdane, regional adviser on sexual and reproductive health at Europe regional office. In an article on the WHO website, Dr. Lazdane was quoted as saying, “typically, current sexual education curricula places heavy emphasis on biological aspects. This is not enough. What we need is a new approach to sexuality education. This is what new guidelines are all about. They place facts in the broader context of values, knowledge, and life skills and so forth, so that the health-related aspects can be understood in the broadest terms.”

The article continued to add that the new guidelines are based on a positive interpretation of sexuality, as a part of physical and mental health. Such topics as HIV/AIDS, unwanted pregnancies, and sexual violence are embedded in all-embracing education that focuses on the individual’s self-determination and people’s responsibility for themselves and others.

We sat down with Western Academy of Beijing’s (WAB) High School Principal Melanie Vrba; Grade 12 student Hitomi Saito; Andy Murphy, middle school English Language and Literature, and Individuals and Societies teacher; and Zhang Hong, principal of Fangcaodi (FCD) School International Department. WAB has had a sex education program for years while FCD is starting its program.

Program Implementation 

Four years ago, Canadian Vrba came to Beijing after years of pursuing her passion for teaching at different international postings in Lebanon, Thailand, and Japan. WAB’s approach to sex education is broached through the health curriculum under their Health and Physical Education and Personal and Social Education programs, according to Vrba.

Kicking off the subject at Grade 5, WAB factors in the developmental age of each grade to give students suitable information. The school uses a mixed model in developing the sex education program of teachers and outside experts.

Some of the classes are lead by the students, with topics such as how to deal with a break-up, relationship, cyberbullying, and so on, Murphy said. The role-play in each of the sessions reenacts real life situations, and teaches how to deal with them.

Hong has over 20 years teaching and education management experience. First starting as a Chinese language teacher in 1990, Hong has taken many roles as a classroom teacher, a teaching director, an academic research head in an FCD education group, and now as a principal.

Hong said that the parents-teachers association initiated the sex education program after it organized a lecture that was delivered by Dr. Liu Wenli, a professor from Beijing Normal University, who’s also an expert in children’s sex education research and an author of many textbooks currently used in migrant schools in China. Hong explained that the lecture and the diverse student demographic helped the school management to come up with a stronger sex education program.

“We are in a unique situation with students from all over the world. That forces us to change and we cannot act like an old- style Chinese public school when it comes to sex education. We definitely cannot forbid teenage students from talking about love or threaten to punish them. That would just hurt the kids psychologically; that’s not the right path of education,” said Hong.

In countries such as Finland, Sweden, the Netherlands, and even some states in the USA, sex education programs start as early as nursery and kindergarten. China, in comparison, is lagging behind, according to Hong. The school management and teachers had a lot of discussions and research using case studies from the countries mentioned above.

“At the same time, our PTA was also looking for solutions to address this subject, and we were lucky to have Dr. Liu and her team come on board to help. She and her team developed the first set of Chinese textbooks in children’s sex education: Love of Life – sex and health education for primary students. We decided to start the sex education program from Grade 1 to 6 by adopting this set of textbooks and with the help of Dr. Liu. Also, we follow instructions from the experts to make sure we can execute this program at an international level and standard,” Hong said.

Hong took us through the process of developing and implementing this program:

1. Teacher Training: The priority of this training was to make sure all teachers were on board, truly understanding what sex education is about, knowing how to deliver it to students, and learning how to measure the result. The goal is to make sure all teachers in the school can deliver the course, so we don’t rely only on external experts to deliver lectures to kids. The school had to make sure every teacher is comfortable and confident with this subject, so whenever they encounter a situation, they can talk to students in an appropriate way.

2. Resource Building and Curriculum Change: The school introduced and adopted the use of Dr. Liu’s textbooks, then placed those books in every classroom book corner so that teachers and students could flip through them anytime before or after class. Also, a full-class session is dedicated to this subject every week, so the teachers can teach and discuss with students.

3. Collaboration: The school appointed a lead-teacher for each class to be the teacher in charge of delivering the program. Simultaneously, all teachers study and prepare the teaching content together, having teachers sharing successful experience with other teachers and teaching students in different classes.

4. Professional Development: The school, with the help of Dr. Liu, gets expert speakers from around the world to come and offer workshops to learn about the latest research and global and regional practices.

5. Research Center: Working with Dr. Liu in further research and development of the program, using the school as a research field, to further study how sex education could be better approached with students from different background. “We have to respect such cultural difference while making sure all students get the knowledge effectively,” Hong said.

The school did face three major challenges:

• Getting the teachers to be educated first, fully understand the concept and philosophy of sex education, and master the skills on how to deliver it to students, takes time. Like every other subject, it might take as long as 3 to 5 years for a teacher to truly be good at it.

• Most of the resources and learning materials are from other countries that differ in cultural context and practice therefore time is spent on tests, experiments, and localization of all the content.

• Parents misunderstand sex education. Before the course was started, the school surveyed parents and found that most parents believed their kids are too young to understand or be taught sex education. The misconception is that exposing kids to sex education in an early age would most likely result in sex behavioral problems when growing up, while worldwide research actually shows just the opposite.

The Next Step

Sex and gender isn’t the same thing. Sex refers to biological status such as male or female and is closely linked to physical attributes such as chromosomes, external and internal anatomy, while gender refers to what society considers appropriate for boys and men or girls and women. These are socially constructed roles, behaviors, activities, and attributes that affect the way people act, interact, and feel about themselves, according to the American Psychology Association (APA).

In schools like WAB, they provide support to lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender (LGBT) students and students who are questioning their gender through clubs such as Spectrum, Vrba said. In addition, they have feminist groups which challenge the gender stereotypes. Currently, WAB stands alone as the only school to have a vibrant LGBT club that operates freely and openly.

APA explains that “transgender is an umbrella term for persons whose gender identity, gender expression, or behavior does not conform to that typically associated with the sex to which they were assigned at birth. Gender identity refers to a person’s internal sense of being male, female, or something else; gender expression refers to the way a person communicates gender identity to others through behavior, clothing, hairstyles, voice, or body characteristics.”

Recently, the school has been working on its transgender guidelines, which at time of publication was undergoing final reviews. The guideline started as the school started to help one of their students who was questioning his gender and wished to transition into identifying as male.

Vrba said, “As our counseling team and teachers worked with him, we realized that WAB needed some guidance for our community for situations such as this. Early on, this guidance included research on gender pronouns and focused on logistics, such as which bathrooms were most appropriate. Later, we formalized the policy so that we could make decisions about student travel for our Asia Pacific Activities Conference (APAC) activities. Those involved included our Student Support Team and administrators, as well as the student himself. Later, once the policy was written, the student helped by having an expert read and comment on the policy to see if we missed anything. We will make this policy publicly available to our community and to other schools if they wish to see it. It is, for instance, being used as a model by other APAC schools who are currently writing their own policy.”

Grade 12 student Hitomi Saito identifies as male but was born female. Saito is the transgender program coordinator at the Beijing LGBT Center. He has helped in the establishment of a hotline and support groups. A twin, Saito and his sister are of mixed heritage, Japanese and Chinese but he has lived in China for most of his life. In my interview with him and a video he gave me to watch, he narrates his story of how he struggled to fit in from an early age, and had a hard time adjusting to school and life in general.

The charismatic student had to explain to his parents what was going on, and relates that his parents didn’t understand at first what he truly was talking about, as they thought it was a phase he would ultimately grow out of. A few years later, the parents started to fully understand. In grade 11, his parents approached the school after he had missed several classes to explain the absence, and that resulted in the school and family working together to come up with a way to let him freely be himself.

Sexual Abuse

When approaching discussions around sexual abuse, the main area of focus should be consent. The contextual navigation of the subject will differ accordingly; for example boarding school students will need more information and guidelines than their day school counterparts.

Schools such as WAB have policies in place to help children know what consent is such as “good touches” and “bad touches,” discussions that start as early as elementary school. Vrba said that WAB’s Child Protection Policies outline the school’s way of dealing with a case should it arise.

“WAB’s Child Protection Policy is based upon the Law of the People’s Republic of China on the Protection of Minors (2012 Amendment), international law and the United Nations Convention on the Rights of the Child, which China has signed.”

According to UNESCO, children from age 5 should begin to have discussions about sexual abuse. But experts disagree. Go to page 54 for more information.